


Autumn Rains

by leonpaladin



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Original Character Death(s), Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:59:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonpaladin/pseuds/leonpaladin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot things can happen in seven years. People forget, go on with their lives: but not Liam Payne. Through the streets of London he'll chase down the ghost of the boy he once knew -- a boy who disappeared and has come back after seven years.</p><p>And upon his return, Liam will discover the lies and the truths, the love and the hate, that surrounds Niall, the boy he fell in love with under the pouring rain, who was slowly becoming an enigma of himself.</p><p>[Disclaimer: I do not own One Direction or any real-life character present in this story. Any event or action (sexual, death, etc.) present in the story involving these real-life characters is pure fiction and did not happen.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Liam stared absent-mindedly at the piece of paper on his desk. The paper was yellowing on the edges but it was kept smooth and without a crease. On top of the paper, written on all caps, was a single, eye-catching word - MISSING. Below it was a picture of a brown haired boy with a crooked smile. His face was so soft and angel-like that a single tear fell from Liam's eyes. Liam's shoulder rose and fell again as he breathed heavily, his eyes now stinging and filled to the brim with tears.

Then, the alarm on his phone went off. _Four-fifteen_.

It has been seven years and not a day goes by that Liam doesn't forget to visit. He stood up from his desk and grabbed the paper, and got out of his office. Of course, his teammate, Louis, after being with him for four years now, knew where Liam was going and offered an apologetic smile to his best mate - a smile that he knew kept Liam's spirits up though he knew there was no hope at all - as he got out of the building.

Liam got into his car and drove to the flower shop he always goes to every day. As he got out, the shop owner was already carrying a bouquet of flowers, ready to hand to him. "I had trouble finding tulips so I went for daisies instead," said the shop owner. She handed the flowers to Liam and hoped he would be pleased. It would be to her own displeasure if Liam isn't. She feels the sorrow he was having and like all the others like her who still want to give Liam hope, seeing him in pain was hard. He was respectable and a kind person, and he didn't deserve to be unhappy. "Any luck so far?" she added curiously.

"Afraid not," said Liam with a frown which grew into a smile moments later. "But I won't stop looking. One of these days something will turn up and I'll find him."

"I hope you will," said the shop owner.

"Thanks," said Liam with a smile. "Same time tomorrow, Danielle."

Danielle nodded and smiled. "Good luck as always, detective."

The wind blew subtly, and Liam nodded and went to his car. Danielle waved involuntarily and Liam waved back. As the car drove away from her shop, Danielle rummaged her apron and took out a piece of paper she was handed when she was a child. _An object of fascination is now long gone_. The brown haired boy on the picture smiled at her, but Danielle knew finding him was a long shot...but she still hoped.

After a few minute drive from the flower shop, Liam stopped by a cliff overlooking a river. On the railings by the edge of the cliff were dried flowers, a sign that Liam was always here each day. This was supposed to be the place where he would tell the brown haired boy about his feelings towards him - how he loved him more than just a friend. But, after tragic events, his confession was cut short.

The brown haired boy was kidnapped and was never seen again.

People called Liam's determination to find the boy as false hope but Liam knew how they hated that boy even if he didn't deserve it. Now, the boy was long forgotten from their memories. In Liam's mind and heart, however, the boy's laugh, his smile, his face - his everything - was an imprint that never left.

As he knelt down to place another bouquet of flowers, tears started streaming down Liam's cheeks again. He knelt there crying until he softly whispered in the wind, "I will find you... Niall."


	2. The Missing Cat

_Oh for goodness sake!_

Louis Tomlinson knew by now not to ignore the wide-eyed person rapping the glass window of his and his partner’s office in Scotland Yard – correction: _New_ Scotland Yard. Louis never grew accustomed to include the word _new_ to the Scotland Yard name. Probably because he was reading too much of Sherlock Holmes and watching the BBC show as well.

He stood up from his chair and headed up to the door. Louis’ cold fingers touched the doorknob and he sighed. This was the fourth time this week that the wide-eyed person had been visiting him and it was absolutely ridiculous to ask a detective to look for a missing cat. A _fucking_ cat. Why can’t he just call animal control or something?

“Detective Tomlinson,” he heard the voice outside. It was Perrie: the great and smart intern who calmed everyone’s nerves with her skills on making a good cup of coffee. “Your _boyfriend_ is here again…” Her tone sounded annoyed and, in fact, Louis was too.

Louis opened the door and he was greeted with Perrie’s blue eyes filled with distress as well as the wide-eyed person’s green eyes. _They’re beautiful–wait, what?! No! No!_ Louis mentally slapped himself. Why can’t he crush on someone normal?!

First, he’s not _that_ gorgeous: he just had soft, curly hair, dimples to die for, warm smile, luscious evergreen eyes, hint of a ripped body underneath his coat, and he’s taller than Louis. Well, okay, maybe he is gorgeous.

“Louis, are you even listening?” Perrie’s voice made him snap back from his daydream. The blonde girl shook her head. “The cat guy, Lou? He’s asking for updates about–” Perrie checked the report file “–Snuggles. Cute little Snuggles.”

Louis glanced at the cat owner who was looking concerned. He sighed and explained calmly to the cat owner, “Look, I’ve asked the police to place posters of your cat in every animal station here in London. So far, there hasn’t been any call about your lost cat. And, um, you don’t have to bother and come here every day. I can call you if there’s any news about, um… _Snuggles_.”

“You think I’m crazy,” said the cat owner.

“No, no!” Louis shook his head frantically. “Mr. Styles, please take into account that there might be a possibility that we won’t find Snuggles. But believe me when I say that we are doing what we could and I don’t think you’re crazy. You’re just worried.”

“What do we have here?” Liam came walking towards them. Louis noticed his eyes were a bit red again and he sighed internally. _He was crying again_. Liam noticed that the cat owner was here again and greeted him with a warm smile. “Hello, Harry. Any luck?”

Harry shook his head. “None yet, sir.”

Liam smiled and said, “Well, since there’s nothing yet, I’ll escort you out.”

Louis started. “Liam, Perrie can do that–”

“I _insist_ ,” said Liam. Louis stopped in his tracks and Liam politely showed Harry the way out. The curly haired lad glanced back at Louis but Liam grabbed hold of him and they disappeared through the door.

When they were out of sight, Liam let go of Harry. The curly haired lad was about to run out of the building when Liam said, “We’re not done yet, Harry.” The curly haired lad froze and listened as Liam’s footsteps got closer and closer to him. “I know what you’re doing,” said Liam.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about…” said Harry, gulping.

“Yes, you do,” replied Liam. “There isn’t even a real cat, am I right, Harry? You’re just pretending to lose one so you have an excuse to see Louis. My suspicions were right. You’re a stalker.”

“I’m not a stalker!” Harry turned pink. “A-And I did lose my cat…but I already found him a few days ago. Two days after I reported him lost. It turns out he was just in the attic.”

Liam crossed his arms over his chest, his brown eyes throwing an inquisitive stare on Harry who was still pink right down to his neck. “Any reason _why_ you haven’t informed Detective Tomlinson about this? You know we do our best to assist everyone here, Harry, and keeping this up – whatever this is – is just giving Louis an even more hard time. He’s got cases – _real_ cases – with dead people and crimes but he still gives time to look for a cat which, apparently, has _already_ been found.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whimpered. “After I found Snuggles, I wanted to tell Louis but I got scared and I don’t–” The curly haired lad covered his body with his overcoat as if he was naked in front of Liam, as if he just confessed something he was keeping secret.

“Don’t what?” asked Liam. “You don’t _what_?”

Harry shook his head, trying his best not to blush but his almost tanned skin was already staining red, making him the most flushed he had ever been in his life. Even under Liam’s stare and not Louis’, he was still embarrassed by the notion of it. He was scared to admit that–

“You have a crush on him,” said Liam, plainly like it was not such a big deal. “You keep on showing up here just so you could see Louis. And you think that if you keep this up, he’ll eventually like you too, am I right?”

“I don’t–” Harry tried to defend himself but he knew it was no use trying to argue with Liam. Not only was he obviously guilty, but also because Liam was one of the best detectives _ever_. He has been in countless cases and solved each and every one. “Fine!” said Harry, pouting. “I _have_ a crush on him, okay? Is that so wrong?”

Liam smiled, his hard poker face softened into a bright one. “Just tell him,” he said, making Harry’s eyes go wide. “Take it from me. Don’t let the chance get away.”

Harry bit his bottom lip. “Did that happen to you?”

Before Liam could answer, the alarms in the building sounded. Harry jumped in surprise and Liam took him by the shoulder. “Stay with me,” he said. “Whatever happens don’t freak out.”

“Does this happen often?” Harry chuckled nervously. “What is this exactly?”

“I don’t know,” said Liam, licking his lips. “But alarms sounding doesn’t mean anything good.”

“Payne,” a voice sounded in the distance. A large man in a necktie walked briskly towards Liam, being followed by a horde of armed soldiers, and had both Louis and Perrie beside him. His eyes turned towards Harry and then to Liam. “Who is this?” he asked, motioning to Harry.

“Mr. Styles, sir,” said Perrie. “He came this morning to check on his…um…case. Liam was about to show him out.”

“Locked in with us,” muttered the large man. “Not good.” He reached his hand towards Harry which the curly haired lad nervously shook. “Paul Higgins, Mr. Styles. I’m sorry if you got caught into this. But the situation won’t take long.”

“The situation?” asked Liam.

“The intel division received a message a few minutes ago,” explained Perrie. “They thought it was just a prank – they get lots of those – but then…” Perrie unfurled the cover off her tablet and showed the screen to Liam. The video played the camera feed from outside the building, showing a white car stopping. “That white Mercedes Benz had no plate number detected so it’s unregistered. Plus we ran through the company’s models: that particular one doesn’t come out until summer next year.”

Liam squinted at the video loop playing of the car arriving and stopping. He turned to Paul. “And this is a threat because?”

Paul pulled out a recorder and pressed play. “ _Why hello, puppets of the empire. You know, one thing about being so undetected all the time is that it gets boring. No adrenaline chases, no sense of adventure… I don’t want my life to be like that. So here’s the deal: I’ll stop by and I want you to make my life a bit more interesting. Yours truly, Simon Cowell._ ”

“He doesn’t mean _the_ Simon Cowell, right?” All heads turned to Harry whose eyes widened. “The one who helped the Serbians to enter Scotland undetected? The one who got into the MI6 mainframe?”

Paul’s eyes narrowed. “That’s classified information,” he said. “How come you know that?”

Harry shrunk back, fiddling with his fingers. “I-It’s all over the internet.”

“Exactly where in the internet?” asked Louis.

“A-All over!” said Harry, his lips trembling. “Conspiracy sites, wikis, forums…”

“Sir, he just knows,” defended Liam, turning to Paul. “But he doesn’t have any idea.”

“For now, as a situation is at hand, I’ll overlook this,” said Paul, staring at Harry. “Though I still will have people check on you, Mr. Styles. And if you have something to hide, we’ll bring you straight back here.”

Harry whimpered.

“Where is the welcoming party?” A voice echoed through the hall, blaring from the speakers. “I’m waiting, Officer Higgins. But I don’t like waiting so hurry up. I’ve wasted my seven years already, staring at the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland.”

Louis noticed Liam’s eyes widening. He reached for Liam’s arm and pulled him close. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. It may just be a coincidence.”

“Let’s move,” ordered Paul.

Soles echoed through the empty hallway, the windows were now blocked by steel covers, and the lobby was just a dark dome lifeless and quiet. The steel covering the front glass doors were lifted up and the fading afternoon sunlight from outside flooded the lobby of the building.

The soldiers tactically moved out, spreading out around the car. As Liam got out, Harry still beside him, he caught the glimpse of a middle-aged man in sunglasses, hands shoved to the pockets of his tailored grey pants. Simon Cowell stood silent, an amused smile on his face as he watched guns surround him and most especially when Paul got out of the building.

Simon checked his nails and then lifted up his sunglasses to his head. His eyes scanned the group in front of him, but his eyes fell on the Harry who was staring cautiously back at him. “Civilian?” he asked, turning to Paul. “Please don’t tell me he’s your IT expert.”

“He’s none of your concern,” said Paul sternly. “He wasn’t supposed to be here.”

“And why _is_ he here, exactly?”

“He was about to exit the building. He came here to check on his case,”

“What case?”

“None of your business,” replied Paul. “Why ask of him?”

Simon glanced back at Harry. “Nothing,” he said flatly. “It just caught my attention. You’re all standing smart and rigid, and yet his fidgeting behind that man,” he turned his stare to Liam. “Detective Payne, I presume?”

“You presumed right,” said Liam.

“Why are you here, Cowell?” insisted Paul. “I don’t suppose you’re here to surrender.”

“Actually, I am, and–” Simon’s eyes shifted towards Perrie who was typing on her tablet. He rolled his eyes. “Don’t bother contacting the Secret Service, Ms. Edwards.” Perrie stopped typing, her blue eyes wide and in shock. “Even if Paul here ordered you to, there’s no use. They won’t answer. They won’t come here to play with us. Neither will Interpol.”

“What the hell did you do?” said Paul.

“Nothing,” Simon smiled, “I think they got my message and they won’t dare make this their jurisdiction. You see, we all have things at stake. And I think I made it clear to them not to test my patience.”

“What do you want?” asked Paul.

“I want you to take me into your custody,” said Simon. “Plus, I’ve also come here to make a delivery. Detective Payne, do you mind?”

Liam stepped forwards, slowly making his way towards Simon. He could feel the tenseness in the air, how every eyes were focused on him only. He has been in situations like this before – and plenty others which was necessary if he had any chance of getting closer to finding Niall.

He stopped a few feet from the car and Simon chuckled. He clasped his hands together and, by pure reflex, Liam reached for his gun. Simon smirked and took off his sunglasses from his head, tucking it into his vest. “Pointing a gun at me won’t be necessary, Detective,” said Simon amusingly. “Yes, there are snipers on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings but there here to keep anyone from shooting at me.”

“My apologies,” said Liam, retracting his hand from the gun and relaxing, redoing his composure.

“That’s more like it,” said Simon. “Now, I know that you had been secretly searching all these years… And I believe I have a solution to that.”

“You’re talking about the case of Niall James Horan,” said Liam.

“Yes,”

“Were you the one who kidnapped him?”

Simon laughed. “Goodness no. I actually saved him. The IRA were making deals with me and they happen to not fulfill their end of the bargain…” His eyes flickered. “So I killed them all. Well, not _all_ of them, just a small group that did the deals. They had Niall with them, and I figured he could be of good use to me.”

“Where is Niall Horan now?” asked Liam, his heartbeat already starting to move faster.

“With me,” said Simon.

He grabbed the door of the car and opened it. For a moment, Liam felt that he held his breath. And when that moment ended, the air suddenly felt thin. Out of the car, a young man stepped out dressed in a tailored suit and had a scarf around his neck.

The young man with blonde hair’s blue eyes met with Liam. They widened by a fraction and his lips twitched involuntarily. Simon patted him on the back and turned to Paul and the others. “I know Detective Payne knows who this is,” said Simon. “But for the sake of the rest of you, I think introductions are in order.”

Simon smirked. “May I introduce Niall Horan.”


	3. The Other Detective

_Seven Years Ago_

It was mid-October by then.

As the chilling wind danced around the sun’s last lights streaming through the holes on the clouded heavens, the streetlamps slowly burned brighter and brighter. Pedestrians minded they own business, walking solitarily or in groups on the way home.

In a small town like this, you’d expect that everyone knew each other so well.

By the low cliff, Liam waited, checking his clock every few minutes. He shifted nervously, turning to face the river flowing to the docks and tapping his feet as if trying to bring himself the beat to a dance. “Where is he?” he huffed, already frowning.

“Hey!” A brunette like himself came running, his pale cheeks were stained pink. “Sorry, I had to pass by the comic store. They had the new issue of Batman,” he said, pulling out two copies. “Here,” he handed the other one to Liam. “I bought one for you too. I know you love him.”

Liam wanted to retort and say that he did _not_ love Batman – but was a fan only – but instead he wrapped the other brunette around his arms, taking advantage that he was more muscular, and nuzzling on his neck causing the other brunette’s breath to hitch.

“Thanks, Niall,” mumbled Liam.

“Y-You’re welcome,” replied Niall, the blush on his face turned from faint pink to deep red. “So,” started Niall, forcing himself to compose his appearance. “What were you going to tell–”

His voice was drowned by the loud clap of thunder overhead. The clouds turned ugly dark black and short flashes of light zapped through the sky. It all happened so quickly but the people knew what would happen next so they rushed through the streets. After that, the rain began to fall.

“Oh come on!” groaned Liam, staring up at the thunderstorm above. “How about some cooperation up there?!”

Niall giggled. “That’s okay,” he said, pulling out a retractable umbrella from his bag. “I came in prepared just in case.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Ni,” said Liam, grinning adorably.

He took Niall’s other hand into his own. This was it, he thought. It had been almost a year since the two of them met at the school grounds. Back then, they were at different situations. Niall was the laughing stock and bane of the school, but Liam helped change that and ever since then the other students never bothered Niall again.

Through those months and days that they spent together, Liam couldn’t help but figure that it felt right – that being with Niall felt right. He was confused at first, thrashing in his sleep while dreaming about Niall there with him, his own lips so close to his. Given the time that it was the start of the summer, Liam realized what he felt was when Niall kissed him on the cheek. It was official: he was in love with the other brunette.

“L-Liam?” Niall’s blue eyes stared back at him as he slowly lessened the gap between their faces. He wanted to drown into those eyes forever. At sixteen, you’d think he would be interested in plenty of other things (and he was) but Niall was more important than those. He could see Niall’s lips trembling as he rested his forehead on his, their lips barely inches from each other.

“Niall, I–”

Another clap of thunder.

Maybe he should say it _after_ he kissed him? Liam guessed that would be much easier than to compete with the loud bangs above them. But just when he was about to lean in and close the gap between their lips, he felt himself being ripped apart from Niall.

Liam was shoved to the ground, a pain radiating from his back. He tried to lift his head but it hurt, his vision blurring. Hand feeling his head, he felt something sticky only to find that he was bleeding. Noise buzzed in his ears and as he struggled to get up, he heard Niall scream.

“LIAM!” Niall thrashed as he was being dragged by a larger man into a car. Liam couldn’t see their faces but one of them turned and saw that he was getting up. He lunged towards him and threw a solid kick straight onto Liam’s chest, forcing him back down.

When Liam tried to get up again, Niall was already being shoved into the car. But his screams were still not muffled by the men who took him as if they were trying to make Liam imbed Niall screaming his name over and over again. “LIAM! LIAM!”

As the car took off, Liam struggled to stand but the screams rang in his ear, calling like a voice haunting him forever: “Liam… Liam… Liam…”

_______________________

_Present Day_

“Liam?” A voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Earth to Detective Payne!”

Louis’ light blue-green eyes looked intimidating up close. His eyebrows were furrowed, possibly frustrated by the fact that Liam had strayed off in his thoughts once again. But Liam also saw in them worry, possibly because of Niall though he wasn’t sure why.

Harry was sitting in the corner of the small office, flipping the pages of a hardbound book he found on the bookshelf to his left. His lips were slightly moving, eyes bound to the wordings printed on the pages that he bore no attention to both Louis and Liam.

“You okay?” asked Louis.

If in any case that his and Louis’ relationship was far beyond the limits of a mere friendship, Liam was sure that he would’ve dated Louis. He could be feisty most of the time – one hell of a prankster and rule-breaker – but when he gets serious about something, you could see how well-grounded and caring he was. And Liam needed that someone: all people think so. But it had never reached the point where both the two of them wanted to even kiss the other – and they both laugh off the notion, commenting that it was bloody awkward and weird.

“’M fine, Lou,” mumbled Liam, standing up. “I’m not a five year-old…”

“Oh?” Louis’ tone sounded like he was teasing. “Going through ‘Batman Loner’ mode again, I see.”

Liam glared at him, lips pouted and eyebrows furrowed – a look that should be illegal to be used by a young man such as him. “Shut up,” grumbled Liam.

Louis leaned in closer with a devious smirk. “Aw, is Detective Payne gonna cry now?”

A knock and a forced cough came from the open door. Niall stood there carrying that still emotionless picture on his face. Louis backed away and crossed his arms around his chest. “Can we help, Mr. Horan?”

“I need to speak with Liam,” he said to Louis rather coldly. “ _Alone_.”

Louis just rolled his eyes and retreated to the seat near Harry and fished out his phone from his pocket. Seeing that tension so quickly sparked up, Liam opted to ask Niall to step outside to talk. He made a mental note to himself not to have Louis close to Niall because by the way they glared at each other, they might as well start a cat fight.

Liam led him towards one of the large windows. “What is it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“That other detective doesn’t like me,” said Niall absently.

“Well, that’s just how he is,” explained Liam. “He’s a bit fiery, so to speak.”

Niall nodded but still rather emotionless. “Mr. Cowell is still talking with Mr. Higgins,” said Niall, playing with the end of his scarf. His eyes then turned to Liam which somewhat took the brunette by surprise because they had that blank feel to them. “But I managed to ask him for permission.”

“Permission for what?” asked Liam curiously.

“To have a look around the city,” said Niall. “I’ve never been to London before. Ever since that tragic afternoon that we had, our old town and Geneva were the only two places I’ve been all my life.”

Liam tried to see if something would show in Niall’s eyes as he recalled that moment when they were torn apart but there was no proof that he felt any pain – or anything, for that matter. It was like being with Simon had sucked all the vibrancy that Niall had when they were younger.

And yet he dismissed those thoughts for the moment. “And you would like me to come with you?”

“You’re the only one I know,” replied Niall. “If that is alright with you, that is.”

“No, no, of course!” Liam smiled. “Do you wanna go now?”

“That seems appropriate,” said Niall casually. “Though I think you have to tell your colleagues about this…matter at hand.”

After they had gone back to Liam and Louis’ office, the brunette didn’t know what to think. He explained to Louis the situation. And though Louis was vocal to express that he wasn’t too keen on the request, he just sighed. He knew that even though Liam didn’t show it, he was already brimming with excitement inside.

“But here’s the question,” said Louis. “What am I supposed to do with curly here?”

“Take him home, I suppose,” Liam shrugged, “Maybe take him on a date?”

“W-What?” Louis blushed.

Liam rolled his eyes. “Louis, please. I can tell whether you’re crushing on someone or not.”

“Liam, just don’t,” Louis glared at him. “I _don’t_ have a crush on him.”

“Fine, fine,” Liam sighed. He pulled Louis closer and leaned in. “Just keep an eye on him, okay? I don’t like the way Simon looked at him when we were outside.”

“He said he was amused,” said Louis. “Who knows? Maybe Simon’s a bit cuckoo?”

“Exactly why,” insisted Liam. “Take him home, Lou. He’s not safe here.”

“Alright.” It was now Louis’ turn to roll his eyes, shoving his hands playfully onto Liam’s chest. “Now go on to _your_ date. Got a lot of catching up, I think.”

“Yeah,” Liam blushed. “Thanks, Lou.”

Liam took Niall out of the building after that. He decided not to get too close to Niall yet. They might have been the closest of friends when they were younger but with seven years spent apart, Liam knew there was bound to be something different. And he wasn’t too keen to tell Niall about his feelings anymore.

After they got into the car. Liam drove around for a few minutes before Niall decided to speak, relieving his neck from his scarf and settling it on his lap. “Is he like…your boyfriend?”

“Who?”

“The other detective,” said Niall. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“His name’s Louis,” said Liam, trying not to feel nervous. “But no, he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Sorry, it’s just that you seem awfully fond of him,” said Niall. “I’ll call him ‘the other detective’ still though. First name basis is only reserved to those I trust.”

“So, what,” Liam shrugged, turning left in the intersection, “you gonna call me Detective Payne now?”

“I refer to you as Liam,”

“So you trust me then?”

The car stopped. Liam had no idea why he pulled over to the parking spot but he could see that Niall was surprised – the first sign of emotion he had shown since he appeared. He could also see that Niall didn’t like his unexpected action.

“I already told you–”

“You told me that you only do first name basis with people you trust,” cut off Liam. “Now, do you _trust_ me?”

Silence.

“I see.” Liam started to maneuver out of the parking spot. “I’m taking you back to Scotland Yard–”

His grip of the steering wheel suddenly loosened. A warm sensation enveloped his lips of which were Niall’s own. The blonde grabbed the collar of his polo and pulled him closer, pulling off a rather surreal snog. Breathless after breaking apart, Niall nudged his nose onto Liam’s.

“I do trust you,” whispered Niall. “But I don’t trust myself.”

“Wha–I–” Liam could hardly speak – so much for being a hardcore detective. As cold as Niall’s blue eyes may seem, they were mesmerizing. In his head, the thought of Niall only seducing him as means to get what he wanted came itching in but it faded faster than it appeared; the blonde locking lips with him again and parting them, his tongue tracing over the edges of Liam’s teeth.

So this is what a first kiss felt like, thought Liam. Sweet and yet entirely addicting. Liam opened his eyes, staring at Niall’s fluttering eyelids. He closed his eyes again and let Niall lean in further, his back pressed against the door of the car. The once soft kiss became heated and Liam knew where this was going…

Liam grabbed Niall’s shoulders and pulled him away. The blonde tried holding on to Liam’s sides, tugging at the belt loops of Liam’s trousers, and whining with his lips still parted and red. “We’re in a car,” reminded Liam.

“So if we weren’t in a car–”

“I still won’t,” said Liam. “Niall, you’ve been gone for seven years–”

“I _waited_ seven years for this,” protested Niall. “I–I need this–”

“ _No_ ,” growled Liam. “Do you even have any experience?”

Niall averted his gaze and shook his head.

“We’re just starting again, Niall,” said Liam, tracing his fingertips down Niall’s jawline. “You’ve only come back for just an hour and what you’re asking is a bit hasty for the both of us. As cheesy as it sounds, I want things like these to be special…”

“Do you love me?” asked Niall.

“I turned the world upside down in hopes of finding you for seven years,” replied Liam, feeling brave of the moment. “What do you think?”

“And will you be willing to turn it right side up for me?” said Niall.

“Is that why you came back, even if you didn’t have to? Because you want to use me?”

“No,” said Niall. “You were my only and personal agenda, and nothing else.”

“I love you but,” Liam sighed, finally having said the thing that had been locked up and pounding in his chest for far too long, “there’s a fine line between being in love and being an idiot that I don’t ever want to cross.”

He never thought it would have been that easy to say it in front of Niall. Maybe back then they were just kids and insecurities get in the way of simply letting it out. But as he stroked Niall’s cheek, all flushed pink, Liam could see the slight disappointment in Niall’s eyes.

Being a detective meant setting priorities straight, said Liam to himself.

The phone in his pocket rang and Liam fished it out, and answered it with his eyes still fixed on Niall’s. “Lou?” he said, watching how Niall’s emotions shifted from disappointment to dislike. “Have you taken Harry home?”

“Yeah,” said Louis over on the other line. “His apartment’s just a few blocks away, actually. He asked me if I wanted to maybe have a drink or something for the trouble…”

“And?” Liam’s eyes lighted up.

“Were you expecting me to say yes?” Louis sounded annoyed. “Of course I said no, Liam.”

“What?! Where are you anyway?”

“Back at the office,” replied Louis. “I left my phone in my drawer so I–”

Liam swore he heard something explode on the other end of the line. He heard shattering glass and cracking walls…and he heard Louis groaning. “Louis?” Liam sat up straight. “LOUIS?!”


	4. The Achilles' Heel

The car lurched forward into the traffic, several cars blared their horns, shouting profane language but Liam couldn’t care less at the moment. Smoke was billowing from the distance which made everything even worse.

“Liam, slow down!” cried Niall.

“I’m _not_ slowing down!” growled Liam. When he turned his face to Niall, the blonde almost flinched for his stare was pure coldness and madness at the same time. “If you had anything to do with this, I swear–”

“Stop accusing me!” hissed Niall. “I’m not a criminal!”

“You lived _with_ a high profile, international criminal for _seven_ years,” said Liam. “Tell me _how_ am I not supposed to assume that he couldn’t have influenced you through the whole time?”

“He’s done nothing wrong ever since he adopted me!” bit Niall back. Liam’s eyes widened because for the first time, tears came out of Niall’s eyes. “Simon retired to Geneva after he rescued me from the Irish rebels. No one questioned who he was there so he stayed put…” Niall turned away, staring out to the smoke rising up to the sky. “But a few weeks ago, I think he received some kind of message. He didn’t let me read it. But he seemed…distressed. Simon hardly slept after that. I could always hear murmurs from his room… He’s scared.”

Liam decided to continue the conversation – not just because Niall was slipping out information but also because he’s seeing a side to a person he thought would be impossible. Simon Cowell, scared? “Scared of what?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Niall shrunk back onto his seat, shifting from emotionless to vulnerable. “But that’s why he came to London: He seemed to think you – the Yard – could help him in some way.”

_______________________

Louis opened his eyes to find out that he had been slumped onto his desk. Papers now littered the floor along with files that were stacked nicely on his table. His lamp was busted beyond repair and the photograph of his mother and sisters was under a layer of broken glass. But even though, he himself didn’t feel like he’s been hurt.

When Louis tried to get up, that’s when he felt it. Pain spread through his arm – it’s broken. He sighed, feeling helpless that he couldn’t even lift himself up. But as his eyes scanned the room, he caught sight of Simon through the broken glass in the interrogation room a few meters away.

Blood was trickling down his forehead but he kept an emotionless face in front of a man in a red mask. The man was leaning down a bit and in the eerie silence, Louis could vaguely understand their current conversation.

“Out of cards, are we, Simon?” said the masked man. “I was hoping for something more fun.”

“This _is_ fun, you asshole,” replied Simon in an amused tone. “More fun than I had in nineteen years. I would have asked you why you have come but I already know that. The question now is: what are you going to do with me now?”

The masked man leaned back and pulled out his gun. “Lucky for you, killing you at this point in time is not in the plan. But do us all a favor,” he tossed the gun onto Simon’s lap, “and kill yourself already. You and your _friends_ have caused too much trouble.”

“Where’s the fun in that, Will?” Simon picked up the gun and examined it. “No hide and seek, no thrill of the moment. And besides, you know our reputation – me and my friends – and we don’t really go for suicide as a means of pride-preservation. It’s degrading, actually.”

“What about the boy?” Something flashed in Simon’s eyes when the masked man asked.

“He’s not part of this,” answered Simon. “Niall doesn’t need to know more than what he does of his father’s blood-stained past. He’s cold and yet innocent. He belongs in the sunlight, not in the dark like us.”

“You’ve gone too soft, Simon,” observed the masked man. “Too soft to get you easily killed.”

“And yet nobody has killed me for the last seven years,” retorted Simon. “Ironic, isn’t it? When they couldn’t find a weakness, they go out and try to eliminate me. But for the years that I had been in hiding, when I was most vulnerable, not a single shot was fired.” He looked straight at the masked man. “Just for the sake of it, why _are_ you here?”

The man took off his mask, revealing a pale face with green eyes. “They’ve been watching, Simon. And they’re worried of what you’ve been doing – you’ve been busy. Phone calls in the middle of the night, several secured accesses into the Kremlin, and that little observer of yours – that boy from Bradford.”

“Whatever errand Zayn runs for me is really none of your business,” said Simon. “I’ll have you know that not all my transactions are of a criminal nature.”

The masked man turned around, his back facing Simon. He gazed down on the ground – of which Louis could not see – and kicked something. “What is your use of these people, Simon?” He sighed and turned to face Simon again, taking the gun from his hands. “Nothing about your plan fits anything and that disturbs me.”

Simon chuckled. “Good, then it’s working.”

The masked man was about to retort when Louis heard gunfire. Simon watched emotionlessly as the man staggered, crippling down to the ground with a loud thud. For a minute or so, Simon’s eyes travelled around the room he was in, and then he picked up his phone on the table.

“I didn’t order any of you to shoot,” said Simon.

“It wasn’t any of us, sir,” replied the voice on the phone. “We–wait. Sir, we have visual of a young man in a trench coat. Cleared to fire?”

“No,” said Simon. “Fall back. I’ll let Zayn handle this.”

Simon stood up and picked up the gun from the masked man. He placed the gun on the table and kneeled down, trying to pull up something – or someone. Louis saw Simon slowly rising up, struggling to heave an unconscious Paul onto the chair. Once he finally did, he picked up the gun. Louis’ skin tingled. Was he going to kill Paul?

But instead, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the blood off his forehead, and stuffed it back into his pocket. Louis waited for Simon to make another move, his mind already reeling on what happened to Liam. His eyes widened when Simon turned to face him.

 _Shit, he saw me!_ He wanted to move but his good arm wasn’t good enough to lift him up off the table. As Simon made his way towards him, Louis felt his blood run cold. He’s been in cornered situations like this before but the way Simon’s eyes stared at him made him feel so little, so helpless.

“Stop quivering, Detective Tomlinson,” said Simon. “You’ll hurt your arm even more. Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Heaven knows _why_ you would even think that I would.”

“W-Who’s Zayn?” Louis managed to ask.

“You heard everything?” Simon asked in return. Louis nodded though he knew he shouldn’t be so speechless. “Well, since we’re all in the same page right now, I think I should tell you. He’s my adopted son along with Niall.”

“By ‘son’ do you mean your own personal killing machine?” Though this wasn’t the time to be quite frank, with him being helpless at the moment, Louis still asked. “Is Niall like that too?”

“Zayn doesn’t kill,” said Simon. He helped Louis off the table – but not without a cry of pain from the detective – and eased him onto the chair. “He’s never killed anyone,” continued Simon. “He just runs errands for me. And don’t include Niall in the dark world I am in – that we’re both in. I simply took him in. There aren’t any strings attached to that form of charity.”

“And I’m supposed to believe you?”

Simon laughed, rather madly. “Of course not!” Louis felt himself getting colder than before. Simon smiled at him and pulled out his handkerchief. He picked up a short piece of splintered wood and used his handkerchief to tie the wood up onto Louis’ arm. “Of course not, Detective Tomlinson. Criminals are the _most_ talented liars.”

“T-The man,” Louis bit his lip. Even with the wood tied up onto his arm, he could still feel the pain. “The masked man… Who is he?”

“Can’t tell you who he _really_ is because I don’t know either,” said Simon. “But we call him Will. They all have codenames. Only me and my former associates were the only ones who dared to use our own names in the open.”

“You called them friends,” said Louis. “Your former associates: you called them your friends.”

Simon blinked, a glint of melancholy passed through his eyes. “Yes, they were my friends. Real friends. You won’t find that in the criminal world – not then, not now, not ever. But of course, some things were bound to break. Things don’t always go the way you want them to.”

“Betrayal?” suggested Louis.

Simon shook his head. “Love, Detective Tomlinson. They _had_ to fall in love.”

“And then, they betrayed you,” added Louis.

“No,” answered Simon. “They just left me with no one to watch my back.”

“So now you’ve come to take your revenge?”

“Such a silly mind, Detective Tomlinson,” Simon chuckled. “I don’t bear grudges. What am I, some kind of amateur who can’t even handle a bit of disappointment? If you think so, then you’re gravely mistaken.”

“So why _have_ you come back to England?”

“If I told you, I would have to kill you.” Simon laughed as he watched Louis’ eyes widen. “I’m just kidding, Detective Tomlinson. But so far as the previous statement goes, I can’t tell you.”  

Simon then shrugged, fetching a long, tattered upholstery cloth by the door and fashioned it up, tying up on Louis’ shoulder so it should cradle the detective’s arm. “Even so,” he continued, “I would still tell you this: Love is the most curious thing. It can be both your Aegis shield and your Achilles’ heel. Just like how Detective Payne is with Niall… Just like how you are with that young man earlier today.”

Louis’ cheeks burned red. _No! No! Stop it! I don’t like him!_ But even though he fought hard to repel it, the thoughts still came – of Harry and his evergreen eyes. And Louis knew that the more he tried to suppress it, the more he would feel it. Harry was just the most engaging thing to him – the way he’s both a docile, scaredy cat, and the smartest talker around.

“You should learn to control your emotions,” commented Simon, kicking the rubble around the office as if trying to look for something on the floor. “The less your emotions show, the less vulnerable you are. Not entirely impervious but you shouldn’t let them gain the upper hand.”

Louis stood up, trying to be less wobbly so his arm wouldn’t hurt so much. “And you’re telling me this because?”

“You have potential,”

“Potential criminal? I don’t think so,”

Simon shook his head. “You’re smart – even better than Detective Payne – yet you keep living underneath his shadow. You work on the sidelines, let him take home all the glory. Why? It’s the most curious thing for me, Detective Tomlinson. You’re more intact, more emotionally stable than him, and yet he solves every attention-catching case while you sit here,” a smirked formed on his lips, “passing out flyers all over London for a missing cat.”

In one swift movement, Louis pulled out his gun (which he didn’t know he still had until that moment) and pointed it at Simon’s forehead. His eyes were burning, a complete contrast to Simon’s cold and almost blank ones. Through his teeth, he hissed. “I swear, if you don’t stop filling my head with your murderous ideas – if you don’t stop trying to turn me against my best friend – I won’t even feel guilty to stick a bullet into that _fucking_ skull of yours!”

“Temper, temper!” Simon continued searching the floor with his feet. “You seem so very much disclosed when it comes to your relationship with Detective Payne…” Louis heard glass cracking and Simon bent down, picking up a photograph, and closely examining it. “What a lovely group of women – your mother and sisters, I presume?”

Louis suddenly stiffened. He knew that Simon probably already recognized his family and that he knew them since the start, and yet Louis was having this nagging feeling his stomach that Simon bringing up Louis’ family had something dubious about it.

“Your mother must love you and your sisters so much,” cited Simon. “Why, most women who have this many children would’ve brought them up for adoption! But your mother…I could see that she’s a strong woman – of many virtues, of course,” Simon’s eyes shifted from the photograph towards Louis, “and yet, even with all these people loving you, there’s still a gap in your heart that hasn’t healed when your father left you.”

“I don’t have a father,” replied Louis coldly. “What does this have to do with Liam?”

“Oh but it has _everything_ to do with Detective Payne, doesn’t it, _Louis_?” Simon pressed the palm of his hand onto the dusty table and his fingers began to rub against the wood, smudging the dirt onto his hand. “Or should I call you Lou? I know you love it when Liam calls you that…”

“I don’t know what you’re–”

“There are things that we care about, Detective Tomlinson,” said Simon. “And for you, Detective Payne is one of them. So why can’t you tell him? There’s nothing to be embarrassed about seeing him that way.”

“H-He’s–” Louis tried to speak but his voice failed him, out of his lips came out a small gasp instead. “What do you want?” he asked in a whisper. “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!”

“I want you to work for me,” said Simon.

Louis scoffed. “Like that’ll ever happen!”

“What if I told you _why_ I’m really here?” That got Louis’ attention and forced out a smile onto Simon’s lips. Curiosity was good to an extent, but on this case, Louis knew it would either be the death of him or the break he was looking for.

“I’m listening…”

“What if I told you that nothing is what it seems?”

_________________________

Harry made his way out of the coffee shop. With disappointment still written all over his face, he forced the slightly bitter hot coffee down his throat. It was soothing and yet not enough. Harry had concluded that he’d been such an idiot to ask the detective if he wanted something to drink. Of course he would think it meant something else!

But it didn’t mean something else. In reality, Harry just wanted Louis to stay and perhaps take that opportunity to tell him the truth about the missing cat. But without any luck on his side, the detective exited the house without even saying goodbye.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” he muttered to himself as he made his way back into his apartment.

As he fitted the key into the door, he felt eyes trained onto him. He didn’t dare turn around because he had the feeling that it’d worsen things more. He already had a bad day, considering, and he didn’t want anything to add up to that.

So Harry just tried to act like there was nothing staring at him and he opened the door and closed it behind him, out of sight…

“Who are you, really?” asked a young man in the car blankly. He ran his fingers through his quiffed raven-black hair and rested his head onto the headrest on the seat of the car. “Styles…” he muttered. “Harry. Edward. Styles.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “I _know_ I’ve heard that name before…but where?”

His phone resting on the dashboard began to ring and he picked it up. “Hey, Si,” he said with a grin. “How’s things going there at Scotland Yard?”

“Have you spotted the man in the trench coat yet, Zayn?”

“Nope, no sign of him.” Zayn sighed. “What about this Harry?”

“We’ll worry about Harry Styles later. He’s not going anywhere anyway,” replied Simon. “Just keep looking for that trench coat man.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Hmm?”

“How’s Scotland Yard?”

“A bit messy at the moment,” Zayn heard Simon chuckle on the other end of the line. “But nonetheless, good.”

“Good?”

“Yes, good.” There was a pregnant pause before Simon continued, “Tomlinson is in.”


	5. The Doll Maker [No. 79]

Liam paused in front of the doorway. He held his breath and came in, balancing two cups of coffee in his hands. After three days, the Yard was all cleaned up, the large hole on the wall on the second floor had been patched up.

As he entered the small lobby-like room, Simon removed his gaze from the novel he was reading and greeted Liam while reaching for one of the coffee cups. But Niall didn’t even take a glance, busy fumbling with his phone. “Thank you, detective,” said Simon. “Give my regards to that barista friend of yours. His coffee-making skills are superb.”

“Will do,” replied Liam. “Now, about that–”

“Ah, yes,” Simon closed the book he was reading and dragged a folder on the small table towards Liam. He placed his coffee on the table as well and opened the folder afterwards. “These were the highest resolutions I could manage – CCTVs and all. I’ve also asked Zayn to look for him but until now, there’s no sign of him.”

“I’d like to meet this Zayn sometime,” said Liam.

“Yeah, you should,” said Niall grumpily. “Maybe he could teach you a thing or two about how it’s not good to put someone in cuffs for no reason at all…”

“Look, I said I’m sorry.” Liam looked down and handed Niall the other coffee cup. “Here’s your coffee.”

“Put that on the table,” said Niall, looking away.

“Now, Niall,” warned Simon. “Cut the young detective some slack. He was just doing his job.”

“He was being a dickhead, if you ask me–”

“Niall!” Simon stood up, glaring at the blonde lad. “Manners!”

“No, no, it’s alright, Simon,” insisted Liam, placing the coffee on the table. Taking the folder containing the photos, Liam curtly nodded to Simon. “I guess I’ll be going. Call if you need anything.” He exited the room, suppressing the salty liquid in his eyes as he walked down the hallway.

But then, as he wasn’t paying much attention, Liam bumped into Louis in the hall. The photos scattered all over the floor and both of them bent down to grab the pictures. “You okay?” asked Louis, stacking the pictures neatly back into the folder in Liam’s hand.

“Yeah,” lied Liam. “I’m–I was just gonna give this to Paul. Simon gave these.”

“Liam, I know you,” said Louis. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” snapped Liam, but a tear streaked down his cheek which he quickly wiped off. “Just–I’m okay, Lou, okay? ‘M fine… I’ll just–I’m gonna go now…”

Liam quickly stood up and rushed down the hall into one of the cubicles in the bathroom. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t be so affected by whatever Niall calls him, and yet it hurts so much. Folder still clutched in his arms, he slumped onto the floor, his back on the door, and started crying. Nobody needed to see him – Liam Payne, one of the best detectives in the business – crying over the fact that the person he searched for so long now treated him like the worst person in the world.

“I’m a failure,” he whispered.

_______________________

Niall couldn’t figure why it was _his_ fault. Liam was the one who cuffed him! And to think he trusted the detective to believe him in every word he said but still, he couldn’t figure out either why he agreed to Simon asking him to apologize to Liam.

At long last, after scouting the entire building, Niall found himself in the bathroom, the sound of crying in the male restrooms caught his attention. He walked down into the chlorine-scented premises and checked every cubicle until he found the one that wouldn’t budge open.

“There’s someone in here!” croaked Liam.

“It’s me,” said Niall, looking down and crossing his arms. “It’s Niall.”

“W-What do you want…?” Liam sniffed. “I-If this is about the files, here,” the folder slid underneath the door, “you can have them.”

Niall picked the folder up, his eyes shifted from the red-stamped folder to the door, and he sighed. “I came here to–” Niall bit his lip. “I-I’m sorry, Liam.”

“Sorry your ass!” yelled Liam. “I apologized to you a hundred times!”

“Well, you’re the one who cuffed me!” shouted Niall back.

“You were being unreasonable and moody all of the sudden!”

“Seriously, Liam!” Niall blushed. “Can’t you tell when a person’s jealous or not?!”

The cubicle door opened and Liam was staring wide-eyed at Niall. Who cares about jealousy? Who cares about feelings at all? Liam’s tears were already dry and his eyes were blood-shot, carrying the same broken look that Niall had when they were in the car. “I’m tired, Niall,” whispered Liam.

“I may not look like it, but I am,” he continued. “And I’m getting tired of being the one who pleases those who want things to go their way. I’ve always been a failure at many things – but you were the one thing which, even though I knew would fail, I never gave up on.” Liam’s hands curled up around the hem of his shirt. “But it hurts me when the reality hits me that I’ll never get back the one I lost.”

“Liam, it’s still me…” Niall’s lips quivered. “And you’re not a failure.”

But how could this be the same Niall? That was what Liam asked to himself. Everything has changed about him – even the way he was trying to rebuild Liam’s broken morale. Liam continued to enumerate the things that _did_ change: from the hair color right down to his attire. And yet, even so, he still paused when he caught with Niall’s eyes.

Liam moved forward, his feet achingly slow in moving towards Niall’s direction. The blonde lad’s eyes widened, a habit reaction which was quickly pushed aside as Liam got closer to him. They both knew what the silence and slow movements insinuated, and this time, it was Niall who was moving closer to Liam.

After they had met in the middle, their stare at each other possibly unbreakable, Niall was the one who leaned closer, forcing Liam to cup his left cheek. “Just kiss me, Li,” whispered Niall. And Liam did, dipping his head down a bit and catching Niall’s lips. As his left hand was idle, still caressing Niall’s cheek, Liam pulled Niall closer by the hip with his right hand, gluing their bodies together.

Unlike their first kiss, this one wasn’t forceful in any way – nor did it grow to anything that was needy. Liam could feel Niall’s hands tugging and playing with the edge of his long-sleeved shirt and yet, though the blonde’s hands were itching to feel more, Niall’s lips stayed still, its chapped feel still softly pressed against Liam’s own; and the detective, having experienced kissing Niall twice already, sorely wanted this one to be their first rather than the other.

Niall pulled away, though hesitantly, and pressed their noses together. Liam’s eyes were blown wide, the darkness of his pupils drowning his chocolate brown irises, while Niall’s were half-lidded, his blue ones staring lazily at the detective.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Niall.

“I’m sorry too,” replied Liam.

“For what?”

“For being a dickhead,”

“I didn’t mean that,”

“But I really was one,”

“You’re not,” Niall pressed in closer, their lips barely apart, “I was just angry when I said that…and maybe a little jealous. Detective Tomlinson seems to be the only thing in your mind.”

“He’s like my brother,” replied Liam. “Of course I worry about him. And I’ll have you know, Lou ain’t the only thing I think about.” Liam chastely kissed Niall. “You’ve been on my mind ever since you disappeared.”

Someone cleared their throat by the doorway of the bathroom. “Might I interrupt?” Louis smiled softly, carrying a stack of files in folders with two banana muffins at the top. He grunted, forcing the stack to steady and remain in his hands. “Li,” Louis pinned his chin on the top folder, “Paul needs those files you got pronto. Something came up. I’m bringing these files as well.”

One of the muffins began to wobble but Louis managed to slide his left foot a few inches forward to balance it out. He tilted his head a bit and smiled genuinely at Niall. “I know you’ve been asking for these since yesterday. Perrie was really busy so she didn’t manage to buy some,” His eyes motioned toward the muffins, “You can have them, if you want to. I know you haven’t had breakfast yet.”

Niall let go of his hold on the hem of Liam’s shirt and it was only then did the detective realize that he still held Niall close to him. Liam quickly let go, blushing slightly, and bit his lip. The blonde hesitantly inched towards Louis and took the two muffins. He handed the other to Liam and looked down.

His stomach suddenly growled and Niall blushed profoundly, earning him a small chuckle from Louis who started to leave: but not before hearing Niall mutter out, “Thank you, Louis.”

_________________________

The walls of the conference room were littered with pictures of strange-looking men and women, fiery cars that had exploded, dead bodies, and insignias that would probably intimidate and disturb a normal person. Marker pen scribbles were around the edges of the photos, stating facts about the pictures, but Simon still walked closer, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the photos again.

He walked towards the photo of the man who intruded Scotland Yard a few days ago and continuously tapped it with his right index finger. “The only thing that baffles me at the moment is _why_ Will got shot,” said Simon, turning towards Paul who was behind him. “And who ordered for him to get killed.”

“Security purposes?” Paul shrugged. “His colleagues may have thought that he might divulge information the moment you subdue him?”

“Subdue him!” Simon chuckled, his low laugh echoing around the room. Liam watched attentively with Niall beside him. Louis was on the long table, scanning files and obtaining information – which was his forte – while Perrie sat beside him, arranging every document he pulled out of the folders.

Simon patted Paul on the shoulder. “Thank you for the flattery, Officer Higgins. But I’m afraid I’m getting a bit rusty.” He turned around and snatched the picture off of the wall. “In my _golden years_ , yes, I might have, but I’ve been in the cold mountains of Switzerland for seven years, Paul. This man,” he held the picture of the dead man in front of Paul, “would’ve likely subdued me. But he didn’t. He said he had orders not to and then he got shot. That’s not easy to explain, Officer Higgins.”

“Even so,” Paul took the photo from Simon and stuck it back on the wall, “would still care to enlighten us about this matter – and also perhaps how we are supposed to find this gunman?”

“Eleazar Minamoto,” Simon went and fetched a photo of a Japanese man with auburn hair and a scar on his chin from the far left side of the wall. “Has a master’s degree in Economics from Oxford, a doctorate in Political Science from Yale, and is probably moving the money for our gunman.”

“How come he hasn’t been captured yet?” asked Liam all of the sudden.

“Minamoto is untouchable,” said Simon. “Having such influence in both the criminal underworld and the over-world governments, he can pull a few strings and, voila, his problems are gone. He doesn’t have a nationality – though his father was half-Japanese, half-French, and his mother is a full-on American – and he has no political ambitions even though he could be a world leader with just a snap of his fingers.”

Paul grunted. “And you’re telling us this because…?”

“Of the bullet used in killing Will,” replied Simon monotonously. Turning to Louis who had cocked up his head upon hearing the word bullet, Simon leaned over inquisitively. “You have the ballistics report, am I right, Detective Tomlinson?”

Louis stood up and grabbed the neatly placed large yellow envelope from the table. “Right.” He pulled out the copy of the report and handed it to Paul. “The bullet retrieved from the body didn’t match any bullet casing in our archives.”

“Which means it’s a new kind, newly made,” explained Simon to Paul.

“The doll maker,” whispered Louis, more to himself but the others heard it nonetheless.

“The what?” asked Paul.

“The doll maker,” repeated Simon. “His name is Alec Diaz. He graduated from MIT with a degree in engineering and chemistry, and right after his studies, the guerillas in South America have been his best clients. He works outside Latin America now and then. I, for one, have met him twice when I was in need of his assistance.” Simon chuckled. “And I was pleased with the results – especially with that senator…”

“I don’t get it why he’s called the doll maker,” said Liam.

Simon smiled. “Louis, care to explain for our _highly_ esteemed detective over there?”

Louis glanced at Liam who gave him a confused look. The blue-green eyed detective looked down, closed his eyes and sighed. “Alec Venturo Diaz became known to the FBI in America for months only when a shipment in New Orleans was busted. After that endeavor however, Diaz disappeared from the face of the earth and the Interpol hasn’t been able to track him ever since.

“The reason why he’s treated as an imminent threat is because of how his artillery works: The guns are high-powered and the bullets are of a strange nature.”

“Strange nature?” said Liam. “What about that doll part?”

“I’m getting to that, Li,” replied Louis. “As I was saying, the bullets that he create are of a strange nature: it dissolves whenever it gains contact with an organic substance. That being said, when the bullet hits the body of the victim, it will leave no traces.

“For that doll part you were asking, Diaz gained this name of his because of his method of shipping: through deliveries of toy dolls. Barbie, Cabbage Patch Kids, Bratz… You name it and he can use those as a front for his hidden cargo.”

“And coincidently, he’s here in London,” interjected Simon, busily typing on his phone. “He just arrived from a business trip in Glasgow. Diaz will be at the Charring Cross this afternoon until tomorrow noon.”

Paul raised his eyebrow. “Then what are we waiting for?”

______________________

“Simon… I have heard that you were in London.”

“So have I of you,”

Simon smiled at the man at the other end of the steel table. The man with black hair and light brown eyes stared at him pleasantly, as if they were just friends exchanging pleasantries. His hands, which bore scars and burns, were handcuffed to the table and were folded on top of one another. At his lingering stare on Simon, tension could be felt: of traitors and criminals, of liars and devils in the flesh.

“Your boy, no doubt,” said Diaz, sporting an amused smile. “Cunning as a fox and subtle as a snake…just like you. But the only difference is that he isn’t a monster – just a brat.”

“Yes, and that _brat_ , as cunning and subtle as you supposed he is,” Simon drummed his fingers on the table, “will be far better than any of us. Zayn isn’t someone you should treat lightly.”

There was silence in the room. Behind Simon, Paul stood quietly, only watching and observing. Outside the room, Louis watched attentively, his arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed. Liam and Niall seemed to be inseparable, close together behind Louis.

As the speakers outside blared only static, Niall leaned in closer to Liam. Hands firmly held onto Liam’s taut biceps, Niall whispered in his ear: “I’ve already told Simon I’ll be staying at your house tonight. Do you mind? I just want us to talk about some things.”

Liam eyed him warily with a grimace on his face. “Ni, I know what you’re thinking. I don’t think–”

“No, not in bed!” whispered Niall, blushing. Liam knew he should be embarrassed to assume such things but he wasn’t. He was careful of what the two of them should and would be doing in the future. Niall, as though knowing Liam’s reasons, let go of his hold on the detective’s arm.

His fingers intertwined with each other as his sight shifted to the distance. “I know you told me we should go and take this slow, and I understand that. Seven years was a long time, yes, and I figured from there why you had your reservations… It’s like we don’t know each other anymore. There were things that grew in our selves during the time we were apart.”

“So I want for us to get to know each other like when we first met,” stated Niall. “If you want, we could redo everything and be friends again…”

The blue eyes that Liam remembered suddenly came back, so enchanting and riddled with so many things. It brought back the memories of the playground, and the afternoon of tears and Liam’s whispers to Niall that everything was going to be alright. But now, he could hardly speak his mind to the blonde lad anymore.

“A ridiculous fantasy,” a hiss fell through the air.

Diaz’s voice echoed through the speakers as he stood up, only held back by the cuffs on his hands. The metal clanged as Diaz forced it up, as his stare lingered on Simon who looked at him calmly and with a studying look in his eyes. Paul jerked, surprised by Diaz’s sudden movements, but Simon waved him off and eyed him momentarily, telling him not to upset the doll maker any further.

Forcing the cuffs one last time and failing, Diaz sat back down and took a deep breath. “We both know why you’re here in London, Simon. We both know what’s at stake – everybody _knows_ ,” the doll maker’s eyes narrowed, “but you still play this ridiculous game… I advise you to just give up. They are a lost cause. Even if you find my client – which is, I think, why I am here – there is no way you can save them.”

“I’ll take my chances,” replied Simon. He gave off an awkward laugh, his teeth showing off in a ludicrous way. “You know me, Alec. I never give up. Now, the name please.”

“You’re going to die, Simon,” insisted Diaz. “Don’t do this. You’ve already managed to hide yourself…and you’re losing that peaceful future by coming back.”

“I never left,” said Simon. “And I’ve _always_ had Death behind my shoulder.”

“So be it,”

“Thank you.”

“He calls himself the Hacker.”


	6. The Raven [No. 02]

_High-Level Security Facility – London, England_

Three loud blast of a siren echoed through the opening steel door and through the dimly lit corridor. With a loud thud the door came to a halt, and the corridor’s lighting slightly flickered. Footsteps echoed as two men walked down the hallway, side by side, with the leaner and smaller one in handcuffs and was staring blankly at the almost endless corridor.

“Are we there yet?” asked Simon

“I can see that patience isn’t your best virtue,” commented Paul. “But yes, just a few more cells down this hall.”

The entire hallway seemed clean, its sickly gray walls without a hint of a crack or a spot. But through the metal-barred doors, stares of the facility’s patrons – its silent occupants – lingered on Simon. Some of the prisoners looked at him with flaring anger, and others with fear.

“I’m not welcome here,” whispered Simon. “But that’s not unusual.”

“You don’t have to worry about them,” insisted Paul, stopping at a monochrome door identical to all the ones they had passed by. “Ah, here we are.”

On top of the door, a charcoal black number twenty-one was nailed onto the wall. As Paul punched in the code, Simon fiddled with the chains of his handcuffs. “Were these even necessary?” he asked, more to himself rather than to Paul, but the taller man nevertheless replied as the door hissed open.

“Precaution,” said Paul. “I still don’t trust you.”

“And yet here you are, helping me see an old friend of mine,” Simon smiled smugly. “How ironic.”

“You said this would help us in looking for the Hacker,” said Paul.

“She will,” said Simon.

“Of course I will, Simon,” the voice inside the cell sounded excited, rather enthusiastic. “You know you could always count on me.”

“Never doubted that,” Simon chuckled, “Cheryl.”

__________________________

Harry settled down on an empty table in the coffee shop and retrieved his laptop from his bag. The coffee cup on the table shuddered as he placed his laptop forcefully. This was probably the worst day of his life (though that would be an overstatement) and the massive amount of paperwork was killing him. Really killing him. _Really_.

“Fuck my life,” he groaned silently.

“The matter in which I would oblige to do so depends,” answered a raven-haired young man who sat opposite him across the table. The young man smiled at him. “Man or a woman? And it would also be dependent on whether it would be good or not to our possible acquaintance.”

Harry’s eyebrow raised and his lips slightly quirked upwards. “Bisexual, actually, and it won’t be good – definitely not good.”

“Zayn Malik,” announced the raven haired lad to Harry. “I’m–”

“The one who watches over my house from across the street in a car, yes, yes,” Harry rolled his eyes and continued typing on his laptop, glancing at the stack of paper beside it. Zayn’s eyes widened, not expecting the curly haired lad to be so nonchalant about the notion of someone monitoring his every move.

“Don’t think you’re clever and all,” he paused from typing and closed his laptop, staring unemotionally at Zayn, “and I want you _off_ my back. For God’s sake!” Harry inhaled and exhaled, settling his hands gracefully over his laptop.

His eyes started glancing at every direction and Zayn noticed the beginnings of a panic attack. “J-Just tell Officer Higgins that I don’t know anything! I’m–I–I was just asking for my cat…” Harry started playing with his fingers. “I’m no one… I’m just ordinary. I’ve got a job, a devil for a boss, and a lot of bills overdue! Please…”

For a second there, Zayn thought Harry knew who he was. It turned out that the curly haired lad mistook him for a police officer. Zayn remembered Simon mentioning to him about Paul Higgins having suspicions over Harry, much like Simon had as well, and, being so, had placed him under observation. So the raven haired lad had concluded that Harry was getting frantic about it – on top of his already frustrating work life.

The ability of Zayn to charm his way out of situations – _charmspeak_ , as Niall would call it – was brought up by Simon on several occasions, noticing Zayn’s small talks with some young ladies in the town nearby Simon’s villa in Switzerland. But this will be the first time Zayn would make use of it _consciously_ in order to reinforce Harry’s perception that he was a police officer from Scotland Yard.

He took Harry’s shaking hands into his, earning a slight gasp of surprise from the curly haired lad, and looked at him with all the sincerity in his eyes that he could muster. “I understand what you’re saying,” said Zayn, offering Harry a small smile. “However, this is my job. Please understand that as well. If this is causing you frustrations, for that I am sorry. But I promise you: I’m not gonna hurt you. Officer Higgins is just a very cautious man. If you’re ordinary as you say you are, then, eventually, he would believe that. Just be true to yourself.”

“Awfully sweet for a cop,” observed Harry.

“Yes, well,” Zayn swallowed, “I…I have kids. I got a girl about your age.”

“Aren’t you too young to have a kid…or _kids_ , for that matter?”

“Girlfriend from college,” lied Zayn. “Forgot to use rubber. I may not look like it but I’m already nearing my thirties.”

Zayn’s phone started to ring in his pocket and the raven haired lad sighed internally. He pulled it out and read out the message from an unregistered number:

**_Simon wants you to come here to Scotland Yard. Said something about you meeting the family. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you too. – Tomlinson_ **

Taking this as an opportunity, Zayn excused himself from Harry, stating that he was needed at Scotland Yard – which proved to be a wrong thing to do. Harry quickly packed his things and requested to come along. Though he saw this as a minor difficulty, Zayn still reluctantly agreed, already being tailed by Harry out of the coffee shop and into the car.

“I’m still not sure about this,” said Zayn, trying to act nervous and was failing miserably to do so (due to the fact that his voice was still almost emotionless).

“Please?” Harry bared his teeth at Zayn, as well as his dimples, and the raven haired lad couldn’t do anything but sigh, hit the accelerator, and hope Simon doesn’t kill him when they arrive there.

__________________________

Niall had been watching detective movies and reading detective stories during his time in Switzerland to pass time every now and then, but the reality of the job suddenly hit him – both visually and smell-wise – when Liam’s apartment door opened.

“Ugh,” he grunted, his nose crinkling. “Since when did you last clean your apartment?”

“About a month ago,” replied Liam innocently. “I…I get busy a lot. No time to clean.”

“I see that.” Niall waded his way through stacks of magazines and a pile of dusty leather-covered books by the west wall of the apartment. The carpet has, in his opinion, seen better days and appeared to be discolored; three empty Coke cans along with a box of pizza laid idly on the coffee table; and as Niall passed through the sofa, he smelled a hint of something musky like…oh. The blonde lad blushed. “A little Febreze wouldn’t go unappreciated too, Liam.”

“Sorry,” said Liam, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s just that, when my sister left, I haven’t had enough time to clean. I leave in the morning and come home at night. It’s a busy schedule…”

Niall raised his eyebrow. “And yet, ironically, you have time to groom yourself and smell nice.”

“Are we playing deductions now?” Liam queried.

Niall shrugged, fetching the Coke cans and the pizza box from the coffee table, and heading to the trash can in the kitchen. “Deductions uncover truth far deeper than the obvious. And this,” Niall ran his index finger on the top of the fridge, smudging onto his finger the layer of dust, “is quite obvious to anyone: that you care more of what people see than what they don’t.”

“And you don’t like that?” said Liam. “You don’t like it that I care for my image?”

Silence is what followed. As the last lights of the sun slowly faded from the smudge-ridden windows, the scene between Niall and Liam looked like a part from a detective story. In the midst of the Chinese take-out and chopsticks littered on the dinner table, Niall pulled a chair and sat down, looking up at Liam’s stalwart expression.

“I’d rather have you,” asserted Niall with whole-hearted sincerity in his voice, and a small smile creeping onto his lips. “Yeah, you rather than that face on the tabloids of London.”

“I’m not the boy you left in Wolverhampton,” said Liam, turning his head away and his voice turning sour.

“I didn’t leave you,” Niall’s smile turned upside down, “Those rebels took me away. Against my will.”

Liam’s hands balled up into knuckles. “Then why didn’t you come back, even when Simon rescued you?” His expression hardened, the sense of betrayal once again evident on his face. “I _waited_ , Niall. And in my long wait, grief changed me. So don’t – just _don’t_ – tell me that you don’t want that face on the newspapers,” Liam’s eyes flashed, “because that’s who I am now. I’m a detective, not that boy who was completely love-struck by you.”

“Why are you bringing this up again?” Niall sneered. “We already apologized to each other!”

“Apparently, I only shut up because you kissed me!” growled Liam.

“Me?!” Niall scoffed. “ _I_ kissed you? You kissed _me_!”

“You leaned in!”

Niall sneered and stood up. He wasn’t in the mood to argue – especially with Liam. Brushing off the thin line of dust off of his overcoat, he walked past Liam and headed out the kitchen. His mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out how to make the air inside breathable as soon as possible, but he wasn’t deaf to not hear Liam shouting after him, “Where are you going?”

“Somewhere not suffocating,” he replied.

A few more steps later, Niall could hear Liam hurrying towards him. He decided to pick up the pace before Liam could stop him and another heated argument between their clashing egos – his narcissistic and Liam’s an unidentified sort of complex. But after he had tucked his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, Liam tugged him by the arm.

His first reaction, of course, was to break free but in Liam’s grasp he had no escape. A low, almost angry “C’mere” gurgled in Liam’s throat and Niall was pulled closer to him. Niall was about to retort in some way but the amount of space between them became none. Their teeth clashed against each other as Liam kissed him forcefully, Niall feeling every bit of anger seeping out of the detective.

He was suddenly pressed hard against a wall but Niall wasn’t backing down, nibbling with Liam’s lips as often as he could. With each growl from Liam, Niall involuntarily grinded his body with the detective’s, coaxing him to move further. But they remained as they were, and soon, Liam’s wet kisses became softer and sweeter.

Finally, Liam stopped, his dark brown eyes slowly started to subtle out. The wild man that had pushed Niall against the wall had regained his sanity and gave him one last kiss before trailing his hands down Niall’s hips.

“Feel better?” whispered Niall.

“Yes,” answered Liam. “Actually.”

Niall threaded his fingers through Liam’s hair. “So we’re not taking it slow then?”

“We’re still gonna take it slow,” said Liam. “I just needed–”

“Release from the sexual tension?” Niall looked pleased. “So it’s a burn-up before the restart.”

Liam growled, softly pinning Niall against the wall again. “It’s not like you didn’t like it.”

Niall quirked his eyebrow. “The dominance? Who wouldn’t like a handsome detective rutting himself against you?” The blonde held back a gasp when he felt Liam’s hand snake down to his calf. “Does this mean you’ll be sleeping with me tonight…Detective Payne?”

He took the chance to leave another kiss on Liam’s lips before the detective told him to jump, carrying him by the hips, and with his legs wrapped around Liam. “We’ll see,” whispered Liam seductively before whisking him off up the stairs and shutting the bedroom door behind them.

_______________________

Harry straightened up his scarf and combed through his hair in a flash. Zayn looked at him like it was the most uncivilized thing to do. “What?” Harry asked, rolling his eyes.

“Nothing,” replied Zayn plainly, pressing a button on the elevator. “Truth be told, I’ve never seen a cat groom itself – until now, that is.”

“I wanna look presentable,” mumbled Harry, tucking his hands into his jacket.

Zayn sighed and ran his fingers on the stubble on his chin. His hazel eyes scanned the reflecting metal walls of the elevator. “For Tomlinson, no doubt,” he guessed, though he didn’t make it sound like teasing but rather in a pitying way. “That part if fairly obvious.”

“For a police officer, you’re a dick,” said Harry straightforwardly.

“I lied,” said Zayn. “I’m not a police officer as you so gullibly believed.”

“Definitely a dick,” mumbled Harry.

With a short _ding_ , the elevator door opened into the third floor of Scotland Yard. The male personnel went their own business as Zayn and Harry passed through the corridors, but the women stopped and stared and watched as the two passed.

“At least you weren’t lying when you said you lied,” mocked Harry. “Those women look like they’ve seen an angel or something…”

Zayn turned to Harry, posing with an arrogant smile. “So you think I’m an angel, do you?”

Harry blushed and hurried past Zayn. “Asshole,” he mumbled, glaring back at Zayn who was behind him. The raven haired lad chuckled and pulled him by the sleeve, urging him to go the other direction. Harry was about to protest but Zayn insisted and made a fairly clear point. “The conference room is this way.”

Deciding that it was better for his pride and sanity, Harry silenced himself as they walked down the corridor towards a two-paneled steel door. Two grumpy-looking men in suits and shades looked down on the two of them but Zayn so elegantly stared back at them.

“Zayn Malik,” said Zayn. “Detective Tomlinson said I was summoned.”

Harry tried not to giggle. Who the hell says _summoned_ in this century? It was like the raven haired lad in front of him was raised from a different time. The way he was so eloquent and yet so arrogant made Harry wonder who he really was.

“We weren’t informed of a guest being with you,” said the suited man.

“A tag-along,” replied Zayn. “But I assure you, he’s no harm. In fact, I believe Detective Tomlinson would be very happy to see him again.”

The two men in suits glanced at each other, perhaps communicating in a non-verbal way. They stood there contemplating for a moment before Zayn complained impatiently, “Are you really going to take a million years before deciding on something so _trivial_?”

Harry wanted to tell him that maybe it was better if he didn’t try to piss off the two scary-looking guys in front of them. To his amazement, the two men stepped aside and pulled the door open. “Simon is waiting for you inside,” said the one on the right.

The conference room’s walls were monochromatic and in the room’s air lingered a hint of a metallic smell. By the looks of it, Harry compared it to the kind of cell where you put insane people in. The only difference was there weren’t any cream-colored cushions enveloping the walls.

Paul stood up from his seat, surprised to see Harry along with Zayn. A small smile momentarily appeared on Simon’s lips while the woman beside him stood up and opened her arms, hugging Zayn. “The raven, the raven,” she said happily. “My, my you have really grown since I last saw you!”

“Two years, Aunt Cheryl,” Zayn smiled.

_________________________

An old man stood on the balcony of the penthouse he was in, his gaze travelled through the city below him. He could feel its old beating heart, the breath of every living being who called this once center of a golden empire their home.

“London,” his voice was coarse, “how are you?”


	7. The Dead Man in a Suit

There are many Marias in history. There were politicians, activists, celebrities, and many more. But the woman walking in the corridor of a hotel whose name was Maria didn’t like the fact that she wasn’t like any of those people. Maria was a maid. In a hotel.

She worked the night shift so she was used to the anomalies of the night. Evil never lurked with their faces held high in the light – not until this century, of course. But on this particular night was an anomaly that would go haunt her forever: in her waking hours and in her dreams.

Her Hello Kitty watch which she borrowed from her daughter told her it was past one in the morning. In just two hours, she would be heading home. The top floor rooms of the hotel were the only places she hadn’t checked yet. As she wandered down the hall, she noticed that the door of the room by the end was agape. No lights on.

But Maria didn’t want to call security right away. Maybe the ones staying there just left it open for some odd reason. She walked towards it and a certain stench made her stomach wrench. As she entered, she turned on the lights.

Maria screamed.

She fled the scene, leaving the door wide open for everyone to see the body of a foreign dignitary hanging from the ceiling by a rope, all bloody and cut in half. On the floor was a note left without a single blood stain, an eerie scribbling echoing down the halls of royal history.

 _God Save the Queen_.

_______________________

Liam groaned as the light piercing through the dirt-encrusted windows tickled his skin with a warm sensation. He shifted but felt restraint, only to realize of the figure wrapped around his own body. Liam cursed, pulling the covers off of them. He sighed in relief: they weren’t naked.

Niall was wearing one of Liam’s shirts which was larger on him, showing off parts of his skin on the shoulder and collarbone. Apparently he borrowed a pair of basketball shorts as well. The blonde lad slept soundly, his head resting on Liam’s bare chest; and his lips were slightly parted, enticing Liam to maybe take a bite – like a red, luscious forbidden fruit.

When Liam picked up the phone on the bedside drawer as it vibrated, the lamp cover shrugged off a layer of dust, settling on the surface of the drawer like powdered sugar. Liam cursed again after seeing Louis’ number in bright white on his phone’s screen.

“Payne,” he said, wincing upon hearing his raspy voice.

“Where the hell are you?” Louis sounded wonderful in comparison but there was no doubt the annoyance in his voice. “I’ve been trying to call you for almost ten minutes now! We’ve got a case, Liam!”

Liam wanted to sit up but he couldn’t. “Shit. How bad is it?”

“Murder bad,” replied Louis. “Extremely confidential. It’s bloody gory, if you ask me. Higgins wants you here _ASAP_ because they want this to be over quickly… The media’s in a frenzy.”

“I’m still in bed, Lou,” confessed Liam while trying to be apologetic.

“Please don’t tell me you and Mr. Blondie had sex last night…”

“No,” answered Liam, rubbing his temple. “I think we both fell asleep before anything else could happen. He’s still here though.”

“Well then get to it!” Louis always sounded like a mom. And Liam loved that – he loved it how Louis was always this mother hen in situations where his real mother couldn’t provide herself into. It makes the longing for home less stingy. “And bring Niall with you. Simon’s here as well.”

“An hour,” said Liam, rubbing his hand over his face. “Give me an hour…”

Louis hung up before saying anything and Liam re-placed the phone on the drawer. Niall’s sleeping figure started to stir and Liam couldn’t deny the fact that every time Niall’s fingers involuntarily traced his naked torso it burned.

Niall groaned and Liam coaxed him up. “Wake up,” he said.

“I’m already awake, you know,” mumbled Niall, eyes still closed. “For like an hour now. You just feel so warm that I couldn’t bring myself to get up.” His blue eyes cracked open and Niall stared lazily at Liam. “And from what I’ve heard, I get the feeling you’re needed somewhere…”

“Murder case,” replied Liam, unable to restrain himself from running his fingers through Niall’s blonde hair. “Lou said to bring you along. Apparently Simon’s interested about this case.”

Eyebrows furrowed, Niall grunted as he sat up. “He’s there not because he’s interested.” Niall ruffled his hair and straightened it out. He tried pulling the shirt up so his pale shoulders wouldn’t be exposed but it kept sliding down. “Simon is rarely interested in things – more importantly things like murder. As you so duly pointed out, he’s a _criminal_.” Niall’s eyes fell down on Liam. “So I think this has something to do with the same reason why he came all the way here to England and surrendered himself to Scotland Yard. He’s looking for something – or _someone_.”

“You think so?” asked Liam.

He gave it a thought for a moment. Come to think about it, someone _did_ break into the Yard and tried to kill Simon. But why? Niall had expressed concerns during their first alone time in the car about the late night calls Simon was making on the last few weeks before they left Switzerland. The doll maker had already expressed his concern as well, one criminal to another, that Simon would get killed if he meddled too much.

But what about this one? What made Simon so interested on this one? The first thing that came to Liam’s head was that perhaps there was a certain thing in the murder scene – a signature brushstroke, if you will – that Simon recognized. An old colleague perhaps? He’s a highly convicted criminal. It wasn’t _im_ possible that he knew every bloodthirsty madman out there. Maybe this is the work of someone he knew… Someone that may lead him to that thing or that someone he’s looking for.

Niall stood up, dragging the comforter along with him off the bed, and covering his physique with it. “I’m gonna make tea, want some?” he asked, opening the door.

“Don’t drag that around the house,” Liam motioned to the comforter. “You’ll get it dirty. Try one of my jackets.”

“Fine.” Niall uncovered himself and threw the comforter back onto the bed, and began to rummage Liam’s untidy closet until he found a grey jumper. “Mind if I borrow–” His question was abruptly stopped when he turned his head around and found Liam stripping his pajamas off, leaving him completely naked. “–this jacket…” he finished, stopping himself from licking his lips.

“Yeah, okay,” replied Liam casually. “I’m gonna take a shower… but I wouldn’t mind that tea. Save some for me.” Liam disappeared behind the bathroom door, leaving Niall to pull himself together and head down to the kitchen to make some tea – if there _was_ tea in the run-down place.

In the shower, Liam was grateful that the water running down his body was helping him think things through. He thought of the first day they met Simon. Aside from the fact that that was the day he got reunited with Niall again, Liam was still finding it odd that neither Interpol nor MI6 dared – even now – to make a move to capture Simon Cowell.

One of the cleverest criminals in the world now had his hands around two agencies’ necks and yet he still remained in the custody of the Yard. Was he hiding from someone? Did he think of the others to be corrupt that he didn’t trust them to watch his back? Humans can be easily manipulated and Liam was starting to think that Simon had big plans for Scotland Yard.

But what was so special about the Yard? Call it pride or whatever but Liam still got the feeling that Simon’s eyes were trained on him still. Then he realized something: Simon was looking for someone. So that would mean he needed a resourceful person, a clever mastermind of research! Liam’s heart skipped a beat, the image of a familiar face flooding into his mind. A person who works in the sidelines, in the shadows…

 _Louis_.

Somehow, Liam knew he was right. Right from the beginning, Simon had his eyes on Louis. And whether Niall knew it or not, he was being used by Simon to distract Liam from the trick hidden in plain sight. The whole Yard was put under the illusion that Simon made a deal with them when in fact all he needed was Louis. All he wanted was–

Liam let out an audible gasp.

Pale arms wrapped around his torso from behind, fingers touching like feathers but equally like iron stamps burning marks on his skin. He was lying if told himself that he wasn’t aroused. “The tea’s steeping,” whispered Niall. “Maybe we could pass some time for a while?”

Liam gave a nervous laugh. “It only steeps for three minutes.”

“I want it stronger.” He could imagine Niall’s tongue rolling as he purred. “I want to taste _every_ single bit of it… like how I want to taste every single bit of you.”

Liam turned around, his voice an octave lower. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Silence followed, their eyes left to drown in each other’s stare. The warm water started to fog up the glass surrounding the shower, wrapping them in steam. It curled down below their knees like fingers pushing them closer to each other. And in a heartbeat, they locked their lips in heated passion. Liam groped Niall’s waist and pushed him against the tiled wall. Niall let out a small whine before he almost screamed when he felt Liam’s soapy fingers trying to enter him.

“Hold still and you won’t get hurt,” growled Liam.

Niall’s nails dug onto Liam’s back as he bit his lips, muffling his soft sobs. Liam peppered his neck with kisses as the first finger entered him, whispering _Relax_ to calm him down. As Liam’s finger moved in and out of him, Niall’s breath became shaky, his limbs were trembling. Liam continued to whisper reassurances and pepper his skin with kisses, and by the time the second finger entered, Niall’s moan echoed inside the shower.

“Like that?” Liam purred, sliding in a third finger. “You like that, _baby_?”

“Oh god–” Niall choked, his nail dug harder into Liam’s back. “F-Fuck yes…”

“Is this what you wanted? Hmm?” Niall could only reply with short whimpers. Liam eased his fingers out of Niall and kissed his wet forehead. The blonde gasped at the sudden emptiness but Liam silenced him, locking their lips together. “Do you want me in you, Niall?”

What the heck?! Niall blushed profoundly. Last night, Liam barely even tried at the foreplay and now he’s asking if Niall wanted to be fucked? But Liam’s stare was so dark that Niall couldn’t even reply and he only managed to nod shyly.

“You’ll tell me if you want to stop, okay?” said Liam. Surprisingly to Niall, he still heard a hint of worry in the detective’s voice. Niall smiled and kissed Liam, bracing himself as he felt it – the feeling of being ripped in half. He parted his lips and moaned into Liam’s mouth. It was pain and pleasure both at the same time.

They remained still for a minute before he felt Liam dragging himself in and out of him in a slow, fluid motion, rocking both their hips together. Before long, Niall could feel something coiling in his stomach and he let out a long whine, telling Liam that he was close.

Liam sped up his pace, thrusting in and out of Niall. Not long after, Liam felt Niall contracting around him and the blonde cried out as he came. Liam cursed for he wasn’t going to last longer anymore as well. After a few more thrusts, he emptied himself inside Niall, holding him close to him as they eased down from their highs.

Liam kissed Niall’s forehead. “Certainly hope that was much like what you’ve experienced before with others…” Niall blushed which caused Liam’s eyebrows to furrow. The blonde bit his lips and couldn’t meet Liam in the eyes. “There were no others,” he mumbled.

Liam’s eyes widened. “Y-You mean…”

“That was my first time, Liam,” whispered Niall, smiling a bit. “I’ve always wanted my first to be you, so I kept myself from meeting other guys…or girls. And I gotta say, this was amazing.”

Silence was all Liam could reply. He was completely dumbfounded. Sure there were others when it concerned him – particularly on lonely cliché nights in clubs – but he’s never taken away anyone’s virginity before. And yet, though practically ruined, Niall still managed to look so beautiful in his arms.

“Beautiful,” he repeated out loud.

Niall gave him a quizzical look before realizing that Liam was utterly speechless. He smiled and slid out of Liam’s grasp to stand on the shower floor once more. Niall gave Liam a chaste kiss before grabbing the shampoo bottle and pouring some liquid into his hand. “I think the tea’s ready,” he said. “We better hurry up, right, Li?”

__________________________

People huddled around the entrance of The Ritz Hotel in London. Like flies swarming to a piece of dead meat, photographers wiped their lenses clear of the fog that covered in the early hours of the morning and journalists either texted someone or was busy improving the story they were covering at the moment.

Outside, where all the media were, the hotel looked perfectly normal and that the press were just waiting for some celebrity to go through the front door. But inside, police were scattered, asking staff and monitoring the perimeter. Paul and Louis were inside the hotel room where the body was found, and Simon was with them but went off to look at the paintings in the hallway.

There was too much clamor over a single person’s death. But then again, if you were a foreign dignitary who just went to talk to the prime minister of England and then was found dead in your hotel room, of course the media and the authorities would be _very_ interested.

“I don’t think they’re interested because there’s a dead man,” said Simon to Zayn who was beside him, admiring the age-old paintings the hung on the hallways. Roses filled vases scattered along the wooden tables as decoration and Simon couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t appropriate. “They’re interested because it’s a dead man in a suit. He’s important, that’s why _his_ death is important.”

“Should I ask Aunt Cheryl to come here?” asked Zayn.

“No, no,” Simon shook his head, “she’s far too busy dealing with the Hacker.”

“And Niall? You let him go and have a sleepover.”

“I brought him here to have fun,” answered Simon, tracing his fingers on the canvas before deciding that the painting was a fake. “I didn’t let him tag along so he could run around with errands like you.”

Zayn smirked. “Aunt Cheryl was right: you _do_ spoil him.”

Simon turned to face him, giving Zayn’s shoulder a pat. “I spoiled you first, Zayn. I’m just letting Niall have the excess.”

“And Harry?”

Simon sighed, rolling his eyes. “Are you doing a roll-call today or is this simply you being your mischievous self trying to piss me off?”

“I’m being serious, Simon,” replied Zayn, pulling out his phone and checking his e-mails. “Higgins has suspicions just like you do. If he really is what you think he is then–”

“I would have no problems on ensnaring him.” Simon smiled. He turned to glance at Louis who was busy talking with Perrie Edwards. Zayn made no attempt to distract him from his musings even if Niall was calling. “After all, his weakness is right there: the small but terrible detective…”

_______________________

Niall slumped down on the front seat of Liam’s car. He continued dialing Zayn’s number but it kept on being put into voicemail. He was growing more frustrated until finally, for the fifth time, someone answered. “I was talking with Simon,” said Zayn. “You know how he is with his long speeches. I couldn’t bother him for a second.”

“Are you still at the Ritz?” asked Niall.

“Yeah,” Niall could feel the annoyance in Zayn’s voice, “we couldn’t actually leave, seeing that every media network is already outside and Paul didn’t want the world to know that Simon Cowell is freely walking on the streets of London.”

Niall glanced at Liam and put the call on loudspeakers. “Is the murder _that_ gruesome?”

“Remember that Saw movie you watched with me?” said Zayn and that caught Liam’s attention. “Kinda like that. The body was found hanging from the ceiling with a rope around the neck. He was still in the suit he wore when he visited the prime minister yesterday but his body was cut in half from the torso down. Innards missing, as well as genitals. And there’s a note…”

Liam’s eyebrows scrunched up. “A note?”

“Oh, hello, Detective Payne,” said Zayn, rather cheerfully. “Yeah, a note. A one-liner written elegantly on a piece of torn parchment paper.”

“No DNA found on the paper?” asked Liam.

“As of now, no,” replied Zayn. “But I think the killer wouldn’t be that stupid to leave traces of himself when he knows that this would be a big deal to England’s politics.”

Liam smiled, impressed by Zayn. “What did the note say?”

“ _God Save the Queen_.” Zayn chuckled. “A bit too royal for my taste.”

“Overused,” agreed Liam.

“Right.” There were some muffled words over on Zayn’s end of the line. “Look, just hurry up, you two. Higgins doesn’t want to remove the body or touch anything unless you’re here but it’s really starting to smell.”

“Alright, meet you on the ground floor?” said Liam.

“Okay, bye.”

Niall turned the phone off and slumped back on his seat. He glanced at Liam with a large grin plastered on his face. Liam noticed and gave him a quizzical look. “What?”

“You get along fine with Zayn,” observed Niall.

“Yeah, well,” Liam blushed, clearing his throat, “we were on the same page. One smart person to another.”

Niall snorted. “I know Zayn’s smart, but you?”

“Hey!” Liam glared at him. “That’s hitting _way_ below the belt!”

The car stopped at an intersection, giving Niall the chance to lean towards Liam and pull him in for a kiss. The detective grunted and grabbed Niall’s overcoat, pulling him closer. Niall tilted his head and parted his lips, to which he sighed. It wasn’t until the stoplight turned green that Niall pulled away, smirking.

“I was joking, Liam,” said Niall. “But I still think Zayn’s smarter than you.”

When they arrived at the Ritz, the media frenzy had grown in size, covering almost the entire front of the hotel. Liam quickly recognized Louis’ hotel, suddenly sighing in relief that he wasn’t _that_ late. They parked far from the hotel, Liam citing that they might get too much attention from the press.

“You’re kidding, right?” said Niall sarcastically. “When you get out of this car, they’ll easily see you…and they’ll have questions.”

“Which I won’t answer,” replied Liam. “It’s just a matter of a quick take-off into the hotel.”

The two of them got out of the car and headed for the hotel. Liam grabbed Niall’s hand which the blonde lad quickly recoiled. “They’ll make up a story,” said Niall worryingly. “I may have been living in the mountains for seven years but I’m not ignorant to how vicious the media could be.”

“I don’t care,” replied Liam. He pulled Niall closer to him as they crossed the street. As they got nearer, the cameras turned to them. Lights flashed and questions flew everywhere but Liam’s grip on Niall’s waist didn’t falter. The two them kept their heads down as they entered the hotel, and Niall was relieved to see Zayn on the lobby, busily texting away on his phone.


	8. The Suspicious Minds

_Leinster Gardens, London_

Cheryl couldn’t explain it herself but she just loved salsa music. It reminded her of summer, of vacations, and of the adventures she had with her adopted brother, Simon. Plus it also helped her ease off on the grueling task of tracking someone almost untraceable.

The lies of 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens – the “empty houses” as Simon’s friend so poetically called it – provided a cramped but hidden workplace. Simon did a great job securing a month or two of rental on the place from a friend of theirs, but even with all the technology she and Simon could muster, it was still proving difficult. Six large monitors all had traces running, scouring for even a spec of information about the master techno-geek.

The Hacker should certainly be proud of himself. Aside from the fact that he _did_ exist, there wasn’t a trace of him anywhere – not even a digital footprint. It was if he wiped every step he took, careful of how he made his way through life. There were only a few trained people in the world able to crack codes and encryptions with relative ease and remain hidden from prying eyes, and those few belong to either the CIA, FBI, or MI6.

But as Cheryl stared at the looping video of Will’s shooter on one of the monitors, she couldn’t help but get the feeling that the Hacker was none of those things. Simon trusted her to do things like these and go head to head with normal hackers out there. But this – this was _different_. This was bloody difficult. It was like trying to grab an eel with your bare hands.

Just when Cheryl decided to take a break, maybe stroll around London for an hour or two with a cup of her favorite tea, one of the monitors gave off a loud continuous beeping noise. Cheryl rolled her swivel chair towards the monitor on the left end and tried to figure out what the piece of paper was. Then it became apparent: She really did need to go for that cup of tea.

It was a coffee shop bill.

_______________________

_The Ritz Hotel, London_

“Since when had Hannibal decided to visit London?”

Liam turned his head towards Niall, and so did the rest of the police force and forensic team inside the hotel room. Niall was now kneeling beside the corpse, wearing latex gloves and poking on the skin by its right hand while Zayn knelt beside him.

The two of them looked fascinated by the whole murder. Both blue and hazel eyes trailed down the mutilated and butchered body expertly, Zayn jotting down notes as Niall continued to pry the suit the victim wore and the empty cavity where the stomach should’ve been.

Paul walked towards Simon. “This interest that they have,” he started. “Are they…?”

“Homeschooled,” replied Simon. “Though it was supposed to be Zayn only. I couldn’t say no to Niall. He was very much enthusiastic with helping Zayn in studying. So I let him join in.”

He gave Paul a reassuring smile when the man grimaced as Niall prodded his finger into the corpse as if it was molding clay, turning his gaze back on the raven and the blonde. “Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing.”

Zayn traced the head-end of his pen on the broken flesh. “Apparently, Dr. Lecter has gone for the old-fashioned butcher style.” His eyes scanned the carpeted floor and found blood stains only on the spot where the body was hanged. “Quite clean too. Not a drop of blood except on this spot on the floor. Either he changed the carpet or this man was killed somewhere else.”

“The bathroom?” suggested Niall. “The killer could’ve easily cleaned it, given that it’s tiled, isn’t white, and has all the cleaning tools needed.”

“Already checked,” interjected Louis. “Clean as a whistle. It would take a lot of cleaning agents to remove any traces of DNA and tissue there…”

They stared at each other for a moment, Simon and Zayn watched with both amused expressions. Both Niall and Louis rushed towards the small balcony of the suite and gazed down on the street below. It wasn’t too far down, enough for a person to scale up along the bricked walls.

“I’ve seen plenty of daredevils do more risky climbs,” muttered Louis. Niall nodded and prodded his fingers on the spaces of the brick walls. With his feet on the railings of the balcony, he tried to hold on to the wall, of which Niall sported a wicked grin afterwards.

Niall jumped off from the railings and back onto the balcony floor, glancing at Louis with a knowing expression on his face. “No one bothers to look at hotel walls at night,” said Louis. “The killer would’ve installed some kind of pulley on the railings after climbing on the wall and gaining access to the balcony.”

Striding beside Louis, Niall once again glanced down to the street below. The media men were far too concerned with the hyperbole in their stories that they weren’t aware of the two pair of blue eyes staring down at them. “There must’ve been a lookout,” suggested Niall. “Otherwise the corpse would’ve been spotted by a passerby.”

“So he wasn’t killed here?” asked Liam, feeling left out by how much Louis and Niall seemed to be well-synced with each other’s theories and observations.

“He wasn’t,” replied Louis. “Perhaps it was sometime between his visit with the prime minister and his journey back to this hotel.”

Liam’s eyebrow quirked. “So when and where would that be?”

“Well, that’s why you and Zayn are here,” chirped Niall. “Isn’t that right, Zaynie?”

Zayn sighed, removing his latex gloves and setting them aside. He tucked back his reporter’s notebook into his overcoat’s pocket and grinned at Liam. “Well, I guess it’s our turn now.”

_____________________

The car window rolled down, Simon peering through the distance, towards the coffee shop at the other end of the street. “Alright,” he muttered, turning to Cheryl beside him in the backseat of the car. “I think I might’ve manage to push Paul closer to the edge, sneaking out the hotel to meet you, so tell me, what am I looking at?”

“I found a coffee shop bill,” said Cheryl.

Simon raised his eyebrow, curious. “And that means?”

“That boy you had Zayn to follow – I think he’s involved in this,” said Cheryl, her stare certain. She was never wrong – scientifically or in intuition. It has been an hour but the young man, Harry Styles, hasn’t left the coffee shop. He’d been poring over his laptop like an eager little dog.

A frown fell on Simon’s face. “Don’t make assumptions too quickly,” his voice was deep, “I have my own suspicions about our little friend but I don’t think it goes far as that. He’s too naïve to be involved with the Egret.”

Cheryl glared at him, huffing annoyingly. “Too naïve?” She grabbed her hair and tied it up into a ponytail, flicking it to one side and meeting Simon’s surprised expression. “Haven’t you wondered if that’s all for show? He may or may not be working for a master criminal. I might not even be surprised if he was the Hacker’s assistant!”

“Now that’s just you and your imagination,” said Simon.

“Or maybe he’s the Hacker _himself_ ,” insisted Cheryl. “Can’t you see? He’s playing you and Zayn – all of you.” She returned her gaze out the car window, eyes narrowing at the curly haired lad by the shop register, having coffee while typing on his laptop like it was ordinary day for an ordinary human being. But Cheryl presumed he wasn’t _ordinary_ at all. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Simon gave of an amused scoff. “Prove what how?”

“I’ll take over from Zayn,” said Cheryl. “He can go catch that butcher – or whatever that criminal is – while I go and be the one to spy on the lad. Prove that he isn’t as stupid and weak as you think.”

“No,” Simon stated simply, his eyes and voice suddenly void of emotion. It was the same tone as the one when they were just teenagers, running around wild and free – the same distinct unmovable voice when Cheryl saw the way Simon’s lips twitch in satisfaction when their parents’ murderers fell off a cliff. “You are not proving anything. Harry Styles is _my_ chess piece, my blackmail to get what I want with the Yard. And whether or not you are right, it doesn’t matter because I’m not here to get the power I once had before: I’m here for my revenge.”

Cheryl felt her skin prickle, cold and shivering, and then she nodded. “Fine.”

But her gaze drifted once more back to the coffee shop patron. She squinted, eyes trained on Harry’s every movement – the crease above his brows, his frown, his pure green eyes that were like a sea of envy and malice – and committed it to her memory. She needn’t have Simon dictate her every move, and she wasn’t one to play along.

She closed the car window, sinking back into her seat as Simon ordered the driver to go. As the world whirred past them in an awesome speed, she closed her eyes and let the noise drown her in the darkness, giving herself some time to clear her mind and plan it out.

And then, Simon’s phone rang.

_____________________________

_Downing Street, London_

Zayn stared intently at the number _10_ nailed on one of the houses. He was supposed to be looking for something suspicious, something that would scream _MURDER_ , but instead he became fascinated by the oddly normal home of the prime minister.

“Have you met her before?” Zayn asked, glancing at Liam who was behind him before returning his gaze to the house which seem to have caught his attention.

His feet were itching to step closer and maybe even sneak up inside just to take a closer look inside the navy blue and white colored house. It was calling out to him, though he didn’t know why. The glass-paned windows glance down at him, a menacing glare imminent if the house would’ve been alive. Its black wrought iron fences were like jagged teeth, made for the kill and ready to devour. Were it alive, it may as well quiver with every beat of London’s heart. It may not be the crown but a sword would do so much more.

Liam stood up from his crouched position, slipping beside Zayn. “Hmm?” He suddenly smiled when he understood what the raven haired lad was talking about. “She’s nice, I guess,” Liam shrugged, “but she’s outspoken most of the time – and that the media hates.”

Zayn nodded, preoccupied by his thoughts. In the silence that followed, Liam shifted his feet, tucked his hands into his leather jacket. “So,” he started, lips quirking to the left corner of his mouth, a bit embarrassed of what he was going to ask. “Why does Cheryl call you ‘The Raven’?”

The question stood out in Zayn’s peripheral, head cocking towards Liam. He looked surprised, and then he suddenly blushed. The thought about the house in front of them left Zayn’s mind. He looked away, pretending to check the cloudy skies. “You know Sleeping Beauty, right?”

“Yeah,” Liam nodded, “my sisters watched that when we were kids, why?”

“You know Maleficent?” asked Zayn.

“The witch woman…something,”

“Faerie,” corrected Zayn, “but yeah, her. She has this raven, right?”

“Oh.” Liam said simply. “You were named after that?”

Zayn nodded, cheeks still pink. “In other versions of the story, the raven was a cursed creature – a shape-shifter of some sort. He could turn into a human and a dragon too. Anyway, he like Maleficent’s magical errand-runner…just like what I do for Simon.”

“That’s cool,” said Liam.

Color flooded Zayn’s cheeks once more, and Liam had to chuckle, grinning almost mockingly. Zayn threw him a _what_ look and Liam shrugged. “You’re always so quiet in the Yard with Simon. I never thought you’d be a softie…”

“Am not!” whined Zayn.

Liam smirked. “Oh yeah? You’re blushing real hard right now, tough guy!”

In one quick swoop, Zayn ducked almost flawlessly around Liam, left hand grabbing Liam’s right arm. Zayn slipped behind the detective, pulled the arm and locked it onto Liam’s neck. The detective almost choked, Zayn’s right hand slithered by Liam’s hips, lips close to the right ear. “I have my pride, you know,” whispered Zayn, “and I don’t take on mocking lightly… In fact, I could kill you right now.”

Liam grunted, eyes suddenly widening. Zayn’s hand slithered further down his waist, Liam’s heart thumping, nervous to what Zayn was going to do, a light groan suppressed in his throat. Not to mention they were in public and in front of 10 Downing Street. A short gasp escaped Liam’s lips when Zayn slipped his hand into his pocket.

“Hold still,” grumbled Zayn. “Don’t worry I just wanted to borrow your phone.”

“Then what the fuck was all of that?!” said Liam, slipping out of Zayn’s now loose headlock. He ruffled his hair, dusted off his jacket, and glared at Zayn.

The raven haired lad simply chuckled. “Calm down,” he said, busily typing on Liam’s phone. “Like hell I would even cope a feel. Just making sure you don’t get ahead of yourself about me because I’m not easy to read, Detective Payne. Plus,” Zayn smirked, “I’ve just proven that you’re so much a softie as I am. And don’t try to deny you weren’t turned on – you were just holding back that groan.”

“Whatever,” Liam rolled his eyes, though he still blushed. “Let’s just get back to the case, shall we?”

_________________________

“So,” Niall nibbled on his lower lip, “how long have you known Liam?”

Louis smiled. He knew where this was going, and quite frankly, it was quite relieving that Niall took the first step rather than him. It was kind of awkward, seeing how it is, that the ex-best friend was talking with the _current_ best friend. But the way Liam looked at Niall back at the hotel: it told him they were more than just best friends now.

“Quite a while,” replied Louis. “Four years, I think.” Come to think of it, it _has_ been four years since that morning when Liam clumsily bumped onto Louis’ smaller figure outside the forensics lab. Four years since he first met the boy who hid his broken insides with a smile. “We first met at uni,” Louis continued, “and were complete opposites at first – even now, actually – but then I became his tutor, and I think that’s where the friendship started. We graduated together and got the same job together.”

The car was at a full stop when they reached the side of the Thames. Skies as murky gray as the day before and the air crisp as the night that had faded into the early morning light, the city of London felt like a place for lost souls – a city welcoming the folks with ghosts of their past haunting them, following them. Even with people of different colors, of different backgrounds, bustling about in a day in one of the world’s richest cities, London felt old and weary, tired of the fires and the wars that had consumed it over the years, and it made Niall remember that he was a lost soul as well.

“Thank you,” Niall whispered, staring out at the people crossing the street, barely caring of anything else but themselves. This time Louis turned his head to him, confused on Niall’s sudden gratitude. But the blonde lad smiled and continued, “You’ve been a better best friend to Liam than I have. I left him without a trace. I left him all alone.”

Louis frowned. “It’s not your fault. You were taken away, against your will. Liam doesn’t blame you for that.”

“He told you everything?”

“I had to know,” Louis said apologetically. “I kinda forced him to tell me because it was driving me nuts.” Louis’ gaze shifted, staring out to the empty road as the car lurched forward again, speeding through the road. “Honestly, you were some kind of mystery to me – even now.”

Niall bit his lip, fingers fumbling with his scarf. “Have you ever–” he paused and sighed “–had like any feelings for him? I mean, you two are inseparable, and I was just thinking–”

“No. God, no,” answered Louis quickly. “It’s–my relationship with Liam is pure friendship. He’s like my brother, nothing else. Everyone tells me differently though,” he averted his eyes, “but I don’t take them on seriously. Liam’s family to me, and no one could tell me otherwise.”

Niall nodded. “Okay.”

The car turned right, making their way back to Scotland Yard. The sky cleared a bit, the sun peering through the dark clouds with a halo of frozen sunlight. Louis gave an involuntary movement, not missed by Niall, and the brunette detective smiled.

“You however,” Louis said, “I’m getting a feeling.”

“What feeling?” Niall’s brows furrowed.

Louis glanced at Niall. “Did something happen to you and Liam last night?”

Niall blushed, remembering the burning touch on his skin. “Um…”

“Niall?”

“This morning,” said Niall.

“Oh.”

Louis didn’t sound angry nor surprised. He saw this coming anyway. Liam obviously had feelings for Niall even before the blonde disappeared, and maybe there was no holding back after seven years of being apart.

“Are you happy with him?”

“I don’t think I have the right to–”

“I mean do you love him, like really?”

Niall blinked. He saw it. That look in Louis’ eyes – that look that could kill. But then, in a flash, two silhouettes dashed in front of the car. The two of them lurched forward as Louis stepped on the break. The first figure jumped on the hood of the car, slid to the other side, and ran towards the curve at the end of the street. While the second turned to look at the two of them, and Louis felt his heart stop.

Harry looked at him and then ran after the first man.

Niall’s phone began to ring, which he fished out of his pocket. “Simon?”

“Where are you?” asked Simon on the other end of the line.

“We’re almost near the Yard–”

“Follow Harry – quickly.”

“Simon, what’s–”

“JUST DO IT!”

On cue, upon hearing Simon’s shouting from Niall’s phone, Louis stepped on the accelerator and the car zipped through the street, turning left towards Scotland Yard. In the distance, Harry was still chasing the unknown man, his overcoat flapping in the wind as he tried to catch up with him.

Niall rolled down the window, not leaving his sight off of Harry. They turned right again, pushing against the crowd of people walking on the street just before noon. The unidentified man crossed the street, followed by Harry. Louis cursed and pulled over. “On foot _now_ ,” he huffed.

The two of them got off the car and ran after Harry. The curly haired lad turned right into an alleyway, slipping a bit before regaining his momentum, racing straight through the dark, grimy backstreet. The shadows of the skyscrapers that towered above them are of those of giant trees but are more sinister and gloomy. In the shades of the city, their hurried footsteps clamored for the pursuit to come into a halt, echoing through the brick walls of the deserted passage, but the cat and mouse chase only continued further until a dead end was found – the wired fence that forced the mouse to scurry into a defensive state.

The man facing them crouched, leg muscles coiling, eyes wild like a tiger poised for the kill. Louis retracted his hand to his gun but Harry seemed to have noticed and spoke, his back on them, “Don’t. You’ll make things worse.”

“Is he the one who killed the foreigner in the hotel?” whispered Niall to Louis.

“You’re cornered,” announced Harry. “I’ve got the police behind me.”

The man laughed. “You son of a bitch! No one can catch me – and that goes for the Yard as well.” He smirked and his fingers twitched, nails crusted with dirt. “The Egret is all-powerful, the Egret controls all. And no one – not even the Tres Peligro could stop us!”

“Egret?” Louis’ eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “T-Tres Peligro?”

“You know nothing,” the man sneered. “Everything you know is a lie.”

“Who are you?” shouted Niall. “Are you the killer?”

The man smiled. “The one you are looking for is not here. He is an artist, of the likes of Picaso and Da Vinci. He has come to paint London in red. And I… I am but his humble servant – the right hand of a master that will bring down this crumbling empire to rubble!”

“What master?” said Louis.

“ _The Ripper is walking, prowling unseen_ ,” hummed the man. “ _God save the empire, God save the Queen…_ ”

A low rumbling sound came from underground and silver smoke curled out of the drainages of the alley, like ghosts climbing up their graves, tendrils of vapor crawling out from the darkness like plants chasing the fading sunlight, coating the ground in a baleful fog.

The man swooshed his hand across the air. “I take my leave for now,” he said, slipping backwards until he was against the wired fence. Eyes trained on Niall, he beamed, making out a faint curtsy. “You don’t know what you’re capable of, young master.”

Niall stared at him. “Young ma–”

There was a shrieking sound and then darkness enveloped over them. A strange force blew against them and both Niall and Louis were toppled over, but Harry stood his ground, leaning against the bricked wall of an apartment. Like a stealthy ninja, aimed for the kill, the man took advantage of the opening and swiftly moved past them into the open street.

The man bowed one more time, a car stopping behind him. He smiled and he boarded the vehicle, disappearing out of sight.

“Young master?” repeated Louis. He cocked his head at Niall. “He called you _young master_.”

“Honestly,” Niall grunted, standing up, “I have _no_ idea on what he’s talking about.”

“And you,” Louis turned to Harry, eyes gone cold, “why were you chasing that man?”

Harry stared at him, silent.

____________________________

The man sighed as he rested his head on the backseat of the car.

“What took you so long?” asked the taller, leaner man beside him. He sounded angry.

“That boy was there,” replied the man.

“What boy?”

“The boy! That meddling little twat! He chased me all the way to that alley!”

“Ah, yes. Him.” The taller man smiled. “You don’t need to worry about him.”


	9. The Kiss in the Rain

Harry stared at his reflection. A crowd of eyes looked back at him ravenously, suspiciously, through the two-way mirror. The hair on his skin prickled. Fear – it was infectious, conceited, and just downright unpalatable. But it wasn’t just fear that tingled through his spine, there were also questions in Harry’s head as to why Scotland Yard has so much interest in him.

“Please state your name,” asked the interviewer; a white-haired man with thick-rimmed glasses. He kept glancing at the monitor in front of him for sudden spikes in Harry’s heart rate and blood pressure, making sure he wasn’t lying.

Harry stared back at him with the equally bland expression. “Harry Edward Styles.”

The interviewer blinked. “Please state your birth date and age.”

“The first of February, nineteen-ninety-four. I am twenty-three.”

“Have you ever committed or have been associated with a crime?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who has committed or is associated with a crime?”

“I see it every day, I see death and malice on every news,” Harry replied sourly. “Who doesn’t know someone who has committed a crime?”

“Please answer the question,” said the interviewer.

“Go fuck yourself.”

The interviewer sighed, stood up from his chair opposite Harry, and retrieved a folder from a storage box. He flipped the pages and sat down again, trying to keep a neutral expression as he met eyes with Harry. “I have here a list of words,” he said. “Now I want you to say the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word. A simple word association, if you will.”

Harry just blinked at him.

“Alright,” muttered the interviewer. “Man?”

“Lies.”

“Sky?”

“Impossible.”

“Moon?”

“Icy.”

“Sun?”

“Warmth.”

“Cage?”

“Isolation.”

“Fire?”

“Desolation.”

“Dog?”

Harry smirked. “Scotland Yard.”

Outside the interrogation room, Simon chuckled. He smiled intriguingly at Harry, impressed somewhat on how much a shy boy like him, when forced into a corner, becomes a smart mouth that would put even Simon himself to shame. “I love the way he thinks,” said Simon. “Right on target.”

“I’m glad you’re amused,” replied Paul coldly.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” asked Simon. “I have my rights to appreciate a person’s talent, don’t I?”

“You lost those rights long ago when you betrayed your own country for money,”

“The breach on the northern coast of Scotland was a tragic skirmish,” answered Simon. “I tried to talk to your prime minister but she’s such a stubborn little witch. It’s not my fault she didn’t come to terms with the agreement with me regarding the intelligence papers from the European Union.”

“You could’ve easily handed those papers to her,” insisted Paul. “But instead you tried to do business.”

“I _am_ a businessman, Paul,” Simon chuckled, “and those papers are extremely valuable.”

Paul glared at him. “Hundreds of soldiers died. If it weren’t for you they would still be alive. The lives of those soldiers were more _valuable_ than any of those onion-thin documents.”

“And there you have it,” said Simon, expressionless. “You said it yourself: those soldiers were more valuable than the intelligence documents. Perhaps if your prime minister would have seen that those soldiers were worth spending the nation’s fortune on, they would still be alive. I didn’t kill those soldiers, Paul, your own government did.”

Paul didn’t bother replying to that statement, instead he glanced back at Harry who seem to be calm – a clearly different expression for someone who was more or less nervous most of the time. “We’re getting off the subject,” said Paul. “We both know that something’s up with this boy.”

Simon nodded. “Agreed, but there is no surety whether or not he’s involved in the situation. What we can settle on is that he is easily a suspicious person. On the premise of whether he’s a criminal or just a simple average British who just so happens to have had enough of the stress the Yard has been bringing him, there can be no exact answer.”

Paul raised his eyebrow. “What do you suggest?”

“I already have Zayn monitoring him,” said Simon. “And I think they didn’t start off on the right foot. What we need is someone he would slowly become close to, someone who, in time, he would eventually divulge his secrets to. We need someone who has an effect on him emotionally.”

“Anyone you know?”

“Oh I think we both know him,” Simon smiled. “How about giving Detective Tomlinson a try?”

______________________

Niall had his arms wrapped around Liam’s torso, their bodies pressed against each other, faces millimeters apart, and was about to kiss when Zayn suddenly popped out of nowhere, giving the slightly open door a casual knock, as if he wasn’t _actually_ intruding. “Hey,” he said, with an expectant smile.

“What the fuck, Zaynie?!” Niall groaned, pulling away from Liam.

“Can I borrow Liam for a while, Ni?” asked Zayn, holding back his laugh. “It’s urgent.”

“You,” said Niall with finality, “need to stop stealing my guy.”

Zayn raised his hands up. “I’m not! The case report just came up – Louis gave them to me – and Higgins has asked me and Liam to look into it. Simon’s a bit busy at the moment.”

“Where’s Louis?” asked Liam.

“Escort,” replied Zayn. “He went to bring Harry home. The questioning was over so Higgins excused him until further notice. Simon said that Louis would be keeping an eye out on Harry from here on out.”

“If you two are going somewhere,” said Niall, frowning, “then what about me?”

“Simon’s at the lobby with Aunt Cheryl,” Zayn said. “Maybe you should go with them.”

“Okay,” said Niall quietly.

Liam pulled him closer, left a small kiss on his temple. “We’ll be quick,” he promised. When he pulled away, Niall grabbed his arm and forced a kiss onto Liam’s lips. The taller lad was obviously surprised, muscles tensing for a moment then relaxing as Niall slowly pulled away.

“You guys are gross,” Zayn chuckled.

Niall’s eyebrow quirked up. “Jealous?”

“Hell no,” Zayn grinned. “With all the girls wanting me, why should I be?”

Niall rolled his eyes. “Now that’s just you being an asshole.”

“I love you too, Ni-Ni.” Zayn laughed, motioning towards Liam afterwards. “C’mon, lover boy, before my adoptive brother snogs you to death.”

________________________

Louis glanced at his rearview mirror. Harry was seated stiffly at the backseat, arms crossed around his chest, and face looking as if the earth and the sky just crushed him in between. He was angry, Louis could tell. The result from Harry little word game back at the Yard considered him as narcissistic and somewhat conceited and bitter towards the world.

That wasn’t a good sign.

“You okay back there?” Louis asked casually, hoping for a civilized response.

“Peachy,” muttered Harry. “The Yard has marked me as a _potential_ criminal. I’m absolutely filled to the brim with tantamount quantities of joy.”

Louis frowned. “There’s no need to be sarcastic, Harry. I’m sorry about what happened…”

Harry scoffed, eyes suddenly in a frozen emerald gaze at Louis’ on the rearview mirror. “Sorry? Oh so now you’re sorry? After bringing me back into the Yard, treating me like a criminal, you’re gonna say sorry?!”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Louis. “What do you want me to do? I was just doing my job, Harry–”

“Well, your job sucks,” said Harry. “And what I want you to do, what I want you to tell your boss, is to leave me alone.” It started raining outside, raindrops pattering the car windows, trickling down like teardrops from the sky. Harry gazed at them, wanting to be drowned in their coldness. “So what if I knew about Simon’s profile? Every single techy out there who knows how to scout the nook and crannies of the Internet can find something about every criminal out there! That doesn’t mean I’m some evil weirdo out to kill every single person on earth…”

“Nobody’s treating you like a criminal, Harry,” Louis insisted, “the Yard was just making sure.”

“This is my stop,” said Harry.

“Harry, wait, I–”

“I _said_ this is my _stop_.” Harry’s eyes were as dead as the night, they shimmered no more. The temperature inside the car changed instantaneously and Louis could feel something between the two of them, something Harry was failing to admit to him. He could see it by the way he looked – that he felt betrayed and something beyond that.

As the car stopped, Harry surged through the rain, the loud _pit-pat_ above his head and all over his body drowning Louis’ shouts as the detective ran after him. He was soaking wet when he got to the front door of his apartment, and then Louis grabbed his arm. Harry was about to protest when Louis shouted.

“Goddammit, Styles! Why do you hate me so much now?!” Something inside Harry broke when he saw tears coming from Louis’ eyes. He was full-on crying, not minding if he was making a ruckus, not minding if it was an inappropriate thing for a detective to do. “What happened to that guy who reported his cat to be missing? I hate to admit it but I was starting to like him!” Louis’ face suddenly turned pink. “Liam told me everything, Harry. I know–”

The coldness of the rain simply disappeared as warm lips pressed against each other. Silly butterflies danced the salsa inside Louis’ stomach, a sharp buzz zipping through his nerves, goosebumps peppering his skin as Harry pulled him close, locking their lips together.

At first it was as awkward as it would get, and Louis was trying to pull away, escape from the sensation that threatened to drown him. But he just melted. Harry tilted his head, grabbing Louis closer by the hips, and pressed harder. Louis felt like he was going to explode any second, like there was a thick envelope of heat and warmth surrounding them which the cold rain could not penetrate.

Louis felt dizzy.

He felt Harry’s fingers wandering off under his shirt, tracing his skin, and it felt strange.

But this was what he wanted, wasn’t it? It’s what he wanted ever since day one but he was in denial. He didn’t want to be more vulnerable than he already was, and Harry was doing just that to him. Every time Harry came by to ask about his cat, his smile was just infectious, and when that smile disappeared, he _did_ miss it – he was missing it right now.

“If you know,” Harry said as he pulled away, hands still cupping Louis’ cheeks, “then you should also know by now too that you shouldn’t like me that way anymore.”

“I-I don’t,” Louis could feel his lips trembling at Harry’s touch, “I don’t understand…”

“You’re a detective, Louis,” Harry’s eyes were full of seriousness, “figure out why because I can’t tell you why. Whatever you’re feeling for me is a mistake…don’t trust it. Don’t trust me.”

“Tell me why…” whispered Louis, his knees feeling weak.

But then the warmth disappeared, the pouring rain drowning the heat back into the numbing cold it was before. Louis tried to lean forward, tried to catch up with the warmth he wanted. Harry pushed him away, ever so gently, but the taller lad’s words weren’t so.

“I can’t tell you. J-Just leave, p-please,” Harry’s voice cracked, “I-I…” his lips began to tremble, his willpower to stop himself from just going back to kissing Louis faltering, “I don’t need you in my life! L-Leave me alone!”

Louis didn’t believe any of it. He was lying. “Harry…”

“Good day, Detective Tomlinson!” A glint of tears. The door shut close in a hurry – on Louis’ face – and it echoed through the pouring rain and in Louis’ head. It riddled a riddle unfathomable, it posed a mystery unsolvable, but Louis didn’t believe it. Somehow he knew Harry was lying, and Simon was wrong.

Harry wasn’t evil, he was kittens and sunshine…

But what proof did he have? Now he’s only more confused. The warmth in his body may have subsided but the mark that Harry left on his lips was still there, telling him that the situation was so messed up. He didn’t know _what_ he felt and that left a huge question mark in his head, Harry’s see-saw of emotions that biggest mystery of all.

He’s never been in love like this bef––wait, what? _Was_ he in love? Pry as he will, Louis concluded it was just an infatuation, a chemical defect in humans that make it possible for a simple kiss to spark up a surge of emotions that should not have been. He wasn’t in love, Harry was simply charming.

When he faced the car again, Louis wished a pair of hands would grab him by the arm and just pull him out of the rain. But the rain kept falling on his head, and no one – not even Harry – pulled him out of it.

And worst of all, he was missing his smile again already.

_________________________

“Is it over?” Perrie peeked through her fingers. The staff of the coroner’s office were already heaving a large zip-up bag out of the room when she let her eyes gaze upon the room again. Liam was at the corner, by the door, and was sporting an amused smirk. “It’s not funny, Liam!” she whined.

Liam rolled his eyes. “You’ve just been accepted into the Yard from being an intern and you’re already freaking out on the job.” He took off his latex gloves. “Soon enough, you’ll be accompanying me or Louis all the time. You really have to take care of that squeamishness of yours…”

“Now, now, detective,” Zayn interrupted, “let’s not be too hard on the newbie.”

“Newbie yourself, pretty boy,” hissed Perrie.

Zayn raised his eyebrow, a smirk forming on his lips. “Really? Am I that attractive to you?”

Perrie huffed. “I think you’re a spoiled, self-absorbed asshole, you git!” She stomped out of the room, on a rampage like a raging bull across the field. Zayn raised his arms up as she ran past him, a playful smile still sported on his mouth.

“Feisty,” Zayn chuckled. “I like that in a woman…”

“And that _feisty_ _woman_ can kick your ass in, like, ten seconds,” said Liam, putting back on his leather jacket. “Perrie might be afraid of a little blood but she could make you _lose_ blood faster than you can blink. She’s a black belter after all.”

Zayn smirked. “You do realize that I already _know_ about that, right?”

Liam laughed. “Stalker!”

After the laughter had died, Zayn cleared his throat and began typing on his phone. _Serious mode then_ , thought Liam. Plenty of times before, Zayn seemed to change from being carefree to his silent, raven-like disposition when he had his phone on – his gadget that was most likely indispensable.

As Zayn busily typed on his phone, Liam’s eyes travelled around the room, his mind re-living the scene that came before them as they received orders from Paul. There had been another murder, the two deaths being more than twelve hours apart, and this time it was a business man from Spain.

Instead of hanging from the ceiling, the man was found on his bed, wrists tied on the bedpost and naked. But the same gruesome painting of a hollow carcass still remained, much like that of the first murder. Even so–

“Do you think this is the work of the same person?” asked Liam, out loud and to Zayn who quickly cocked his head up from his phone. “I mean, the only difference was the position they were found. The rest is the same…”

“Except there’s no note,” cited Zayn.

Liam’s eyebrows furrowed, bewildered. “What do you mean there’s no note? There has to be–”

“Well there is none,” said Zayn, almost frustrated. “The first one had a note on the floor but I’ve searched around the body and even _inside_ but there isn’t one – not even a bloody writing on the wall, if Mr. Butcher’s in to that sort of thing…”

“Nothing?” Liam insisted. “There has to be something.”

“There _is_ nothing,” grumbled Zayn. “And I don’t think we’ll _find_ anything. The killer didn’t leave anything to work on from the first murder, what makes you think he’ll leave something now?”

“To make a little tease,” said Liam. “Louis was so close to catching his so-called assistant, and I think he’ll leave something to throw us off course, to make us think we’ve got him. It has to be something easy to find – like that note on the first victim.”

Zayn scratched his chin. “‘ _God Save the Queen’_ really isn’t so much of a game changer.” He paused for a moment, striding towards the balcony of the flat, overlooking the Thames in the distance. Beyond the river was Parliament, faintly obscured by the pouring rain, the old clock tower ticking its way towards three in the afternoon. “But if we look at this differently, see it through the killer’s perspective…”

Liam nodded, walking about in the room until he found himself at the foot of the bed. The comforter and the pillows were left untouched, stagnant and messy as the way they were found along with the victim’s body. “Then there might be some other meaning,” he said, continuing Zayn’s train of thought. “Louis said the man mentioned that ‘ _he has come to paint London in red_ ’, which means there’ll be more – more killings. Which means there’s–”

“–a pattern!” they both exclaimed in unison.

Just then, there was a loud crash.

_____________________

Louis didn’t even care if the carpet underneath his shoes were getting soaked in rain water. He shut the door behind him, the loud _slam_ echoing through his small apartment. After drying himself up and changing in his room, Louis headed back into the living room, checking the phone for any voicemail as a habit every time he came home.

_Hey, Lou, it’s Eleanor! Me and the gang haven’t seen you around since last month. George has a gig on the sixteenth. You and Liam should go if you have time. We miss the both of you…_

_Hiya, big bro. I came along with Mom in taking Phoebe to the dentist this morning. When are you coming back home?_

_How are you, Boo Bear? I guess Lottie told you about the trip to the dentist. She so excited to show you the video tape of their Romeo and Juliet play at school. When are you coming home, by the way? We really miss you, Louis._

Though his eyes were still bloodshot from all the crying he did while in the car, most of his emotions still attached to the strings Harry had wrapped around him, Louis couldn’t hold back the smile. He missed Doncaster, and the last time he came home was during that Christmas road trip with Liam last December. It was three days before Christmas at Doncaster then a long drive to Wolverhampton on Christmas Eve. Thankfully, they all fitted in Liam’s car.

Half expecting a voicemail from another one of their college buddies, he stood frozen when he heard a low, rumbling voice on the speakers. Cold and deadly.

_Good day, detective. But enough with the pleasantries, I just hope you don’t mind my intrusion inside your apartment._

Louis quickly turned behind him, knocking the phone to the floor in the process. His eyes caught a man by the door, smiling at him as he scratched the skin underneath his turtleneck shirt. “My apologies for being so rude,” he took off his golf hat, fingers going through his dark auburn hair once, “may I introduce myself?” He sounded like an American. “My name is Arthur Jackson.”

Hands came from behind Louis, quickly tying him up, the rope slowly irritating his flesh as he tried to break free. The man behind him sported a blank expression as opposed to the man in front of him, but he recognized him. He was the man Harry was chasing.

“Nice meeting you again,” the man behind him sounded disgusted, “Detective Tomlinson.”

“Viz!” the taller man, Arthur Jackson, growled. “Manners. Our patron here deserves some respect. After all, he’ll be sitting up front for my show.”

Louis could see how the man’s eyes turned from golden to hollow, could feel a sudden freezing sensation rising up his spine. Somehow, he felt like staring right at the face of Death himself. The man retrieved a black bag from his pocket. “May I introduce myself again?” he asked. He leaned closer, hovering the bag over Louis’ head, and smiled.

“I’m the Ripper.”

And then there was darkness.

__________________________

“Good afternoon, _mademoiselle_.” Simon rushed into the flower shop, shrugging off the raindrops on his coat, Cheryl trailed after him, closing her umbrella. Niall soon came after, re-styling his hair which had become wet.

There was a slight unannounced gasp that came from the flower shop owner. The woman with wavy brown locks almost dropped the tulips she was carrying upon seeing Niall who seemed just as surprised as she was.

“Si, you didn’t tell me–”

“Niall!” the woman shouted. She rushed past the stunning array of bouquets which swayed as her dress flew through them. Niall backed away because of shock and because she quickly took his hand without any warning. “Liam would be thrilled!”

“He already knows,” Niall forced a smile, “I’ve already been in London for almost a week now.”

“Has he told you?” Her eyes were eager, and Niall knew just what she meant.

Niall blushed. “I think that’s inappropriate to discuss in our current location…”

“Miss Danielle Peazer, if I might intrude,” said Simon, turning their attention to him. “We are here on a business, but if there is still time, then I would gladly join your chit-chat.” Cheryl handed to him a small brown envelope. Simon tore it open and pulled out a slick black card. “We need access to the Vermont Account.”

Danielle stared at him. “I-I don’t know–”

“I don’t think I’ve introduced myself properly,” Simon stared back at her coldly, “I am Simon Cowell.”

“Simon,” Niall glanced at him, confused, “what’s going–”

“Niall,” Simon’s expression turned from stone to warmth, “may I _introduce_ the heiress – the next _taoiseach_ , if you will – of the English mafia, Ms. Peazer.”

Niall shook his head. “N-No, that’s impossible. We hang out as kids – her parents are nice people – she can’t be a mafia boss! Ever since we were kids, she has always told Liam and me that she wanted to have a flower shop…”

“I’m not a _mutt_ , Mr. Cowell,” said Danielle.

“I didn’t mean that to be offensive,” replied Simon. “Just simply stating how valuable you are: The next leader, the next powerful lord of London’s dark side.”

“Dani?” Niall’s face had turn ashen.

Danielle offered him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Niall. I never knew until I was eighteen, and before then you were gone. But I never told Liam too… He’ll hate me. I haven’t decided yet if I would accept it though.”

“But you haven’t got a choice,” said Simon. “It’s a crisis you must undertake, bringing the sake of the greater good into consideration–”

“–I’m not going to be a crime lord!”

“Put all selfishness and worries aside,” advised Simon. “Would you let an empire – a kingdom built by generations of your family – crumble all because the lady who loves flowers does not wish to rule? The choice is yours, of course, but right now what I need from you is the Vermont Account. And there are _plenty_ of people that I know of that would _love_ to find out who the heir is.”

Danielle hissed. “This is blackmail.”

“It’s business, _mademoiselle_ ,” replied Simon. “Nothing personal. We are in dire need of your assistance in some matter and the Vermont Account would help us greatly.” He offered the card to Danielle. “We have to find some information about the killings that had taken place in London, there are two victims at the moment. Perhaps even stop this murderer before things get worse, and who knows, the killer might be even coming after you.”

Danielle took the black card from Simon. “Since when did you become a vigilante?” She went behind the counter and swiped the card on the cashier. There was a loud beeping noise and the floor underneath their feet shifted, revealing a staircase spiraling downwards into the pitch blackness. Mug lights flashed open, illuminating the stairs.

“I’ve always been one.”

“My family will not get involved in this.” She glared at Simon. “None of this will get out. _None_.”

“Seems fair enough,” answered Simon.

Danielle led the way and Simon followed. Cheryl trailed after them, grabbing Niall’s hand and pulling him down the stairs. Niall bit his lip. “Aunt Cheryl, could you tell me–”

“No can do, kiddo,” whispered Cheryl.

Niall kept silent and then plunged down into the coldness of the dark.

______________________

Both Zayn and Liam sighed in relief to find that it was only Perrie, making the noise because she knocked over the metal trays of the forensic unit. She was scrambling to get it back onto the trolley. Zayn knelt down beside her in the hallway and they both grabbed the same one. Perrie glared at him, to which Zayn just raised his eyebrow.

“I can do this _myself_ , thank you,” muttered Perrie.

Zayn smiled. “Just tryin’ t’be a gentleman.”

“You’re not a gentleman. You’re a dickhead.”

“’was only teasin’ back there,” Zayn’s tone turned serious, “’m sorry.”

Perrie’s eyes narrowed. “What’s with the accent?”

“This is m’real accent,” Zayn grinned. “But,” his accent suddenly changed, “I usually use _this_ one.”

“I don’t really care,” Perrie scrunched up her nose.

“Right,” Zayn stood up, his phone suddenly ringing. “Um…” He fished it out and held it by his ear, glancing at Liam in the process. “Yolo,” he grinned, which made Perrie roll her eyes and Liam chuckle a bit, “the Raven speaking.”

There was heavy breathing on the other end, a thick swallow, and then a raspy voice came out, desperate and scared. “Z-Zayn…” The raven-haired lad’s eyes widened. “H-Help…” A short whimper followed, and another voice took over. “I know about this lad’s secret, Mr. Malik, about his little deal with Simon. A deal with the devil, if you ask me.”

Zayn’s mouth turned sour. “Who hired you?”

“Simon already knows where to find me,” said the Ripper. “Meet with him. No police. I don’t want any distractions and nuisance when you pay me a visit – especially the Yard. Screw with me and I’ll serve this young detective’s head to you on a platter.”

The line went dead, and Liam was staring anxiously at him, like some forest animal caught in a crossfire. Louis was in trouble and if he told Liam about it, he’ll freak out and have the entire Yard hounding to wherever in the hell the Ripper was hiding.

“Liam?” Zayn hoped this better work. “May I ask you to leave me and Perrie alone for a moment? I’ll meet you at my car.”

It was a bold statement, Perrie feigning that she wasn’t surprised and Liam half-heartedly agreeing, disappearing off down the corridor a little confused. As Zayn retrieved his notebook from his overcoat’s pocket, scribbling down something in a hurry, Perrie tapped her shoes on the floor.

“This better not be some cheesy–”

Zayn slipped a piece of paper into her hand, eyes dead serious and locked against hers. “I know you don’t like me, you seeing me as some arrogant son-of-a-bitch, but just this once please believe me when I say there’s a pressing matter at hand and I need you to help me.”

Perrie’s lips were slightly parted. God, he indeed _was_ the Raven. “What’s on the–”

“Read it when you get back to the Yard,” ordered Zayn. “But don’t let anyone see it, just you, understand?”

Perrie nodded, smitten into silence by the change in Zayn’s aura. He wasn’t playing or fooling around anymore – he was dead serious. His hazel eyes were as dull as a rusted knife, so lifeless and mad-looking. She thought perhaps this was what happens when you live with a wanted criminal: you become as soulless as them, and Zayn’s exuberant personality was just a mask of the poison inside.

When Zayn leaned closer, she thought he would kiss her, but he pressed his lips on the shell of Perrie’s ear. “To be honest, I _have_ been stalking you for a while. It was under no one’s orders but my own. And right now, you’re the only one I trust therefore keep it so.”

Zayn disappeared so swiftly that Perrie didn’t have time to react, only to glance down at the paper in her hands and walk back to the Yard.


	10. The Iberian Connection

It was by the time the car had stopped that Liam had realized that his seatbelt was stuck and he couldn’t get out. “What the–” He tried to wriggle out of it, pressing the button for release, but it just wouldn’t budge. “Um…Zayn?”

But the raven haired lad was standing outside, unmoving.

Liam tried to call him again, and the next thing he knew something had stung his shoulder. “Fuck–” He suddenly felt dizzy, Zayn turning to a hazy blob of darkness. Liam glanced at his shoulder and plucked out a small dart, then saw Zayn tucking away a small gun. “W-What did you do to me?!”

“I’m sorry,” said Zayn. “I don’t want you getting hurt…”

Though his limbs were starting to turn to jelly, Liam still managed to spit out angrily. “What the _fuck_ did you do to me?!”

“Don’t worry, it’s just a sedative,” answered Zayn. “Louis’ in trouble, Liam. But I need you to stay in the car–”

“T-Trouble?!”

“I’ll handle this,” Zayn opened the driver’s seat door and leaned closer to Liam, smiling apologetically. The raven haired lad sighed. “I promise I’ll bring Louis back safe–”

“M-MALIK!!”

“I promise,” whispered Zayn.

Then there was darkness.

Zayn got out of the car and then he blinked, confused all of the sudden. He shouldn’t be feeling sympathetic and yet he _was_. He was supposed to be stone cold but he was warming up to the detectives, Liam most of all. Liam felt like that brother whom you do mischievous things with and have fun.

Niall wasn’t like that. The blonde was cuddly at times but reserved and quiet _most_ of the time. He wasn’t up for much games and just likes to read all the books in Simon’s library. Perhaps that’s why, Zayn thought, he has taken a liking on Liam: He was his equal.

Shaking the thoughts off his head, Zayn looked straight ahead.

As all cliché would go, the abandoned warehouse in front of him was just the kind of place a criminal would hide if he didn’t have a stone castle in the snowy peaks of Switzerland. It was dank and rusty, left for nature to take its course. Old drum containers littered the compound, standing around like lifeless chubby soldiers; and the building itself was a feat of its own: The roof was almost thirty feet above the ground, some bits lying on the ground, blown away from past storms, large industrial funnels where smoke used to puff out stood in the distance like candy canes far off their due date, and the glass panels encompassing the entire building were grimed, some smashed by either rocks or whatever thing you could throw at it and make it break.

Behind him, a car stopped and Simon got out.

“He called you then?” asked Simon.

Zayn nodded. “He was very convincing.”

“Oh?” Simon bent over and took a look inside Zayn’s car. “Is that why Detective Payne is asleep inside your car?”

Zayn shrugged. “He said no cops.”

Simon raised his eyebrow. “Is that the only reason?”

“Well,” Zayn blushed, “I promised Niall to keep him safe.”

With that, Simon patted him on the shoulder and chuckled. “And you say that _I_ spoil him.” Simon cleared his throat, took off his bowler hat and shrugged off his overcoat, leaving him in a waistcoat and a white long-sleeved shirt with navy blue stripes, and dark blue slacks partnered with his favorite brown suede shoes; he then tucked his red necktie underneath the waistcoat. “Now,” he said, “shall we play with the criminal?”

Zayn grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Lead the way.”

They slipped through a small gap between the mesh iron fences surrounding the establishment with relative ease, the wrought iron tubes to which the meshes were attached gave a slight creak due to its rusty intersections. Once they were through, Simon paused in front of the nearest building.

“So,” Simon fixed his long sleeves’ cuffs, “you told me you have a plan. Let me hear it.”

Zayn bit his lip. “It’s just an alternative, yours would be better.”

Simon sighed. “Zayn, you are a brilliant young man, and I would not have you whining about how un-confident you are about your decisions.” Though Zayn towered over Simon, the older man’s stare made the raven haired lad feel like that seventeen year-old boy whom Simon brought out of the streets of Bradford – so weak and helpless and addicted. “Being my right hand man, and your own man, the world is trembling at your feet,” continued Simon, “so don’t _ever_ belittle yourself. Never, you understand?”

“Yes, Simon,” the raven haired lad replied quietly.

“Good,” said Simon. “Now, the plan?”

______________________

Niall reached out on the top shelf and picked up a picture frame; a boy in a suit and a girl in a gown was smiling at him, though his lips could barely smile back. “When was this?” he asked, turning to the florist beside him.

“My eighteenth birthday,” replied Danielle. “They’ve moved to Wolverhampton by then but Liam insisted on attending my birthday. I remember him bringing a puppy as a gift.” She pointed at a large black and white Siberian Husky at the end of the shelf. “That’s Loki. He’s back at my parents’ house. I don’t bring him along because he’s a bit of a trouble-maker.”

Niall chuckled. “But of course,” he sported a serious face while shaking his head, “the tulips would be murdered. And let’s not forget about the daffodils, they would simply faint at the sight of such a monstrous beast!”

They both laughed – and it had been _ages_ since they both shared the same carefree giggle – but there was something about the laugh of the woman in front of him that made Niall feel like she had become distant, evasive of some things.

“I missed you a lot, Niall,” said Danielle. She frowned, almost as if forcing herself not to cry. “Everyone thought you were…” after which a pause, “dead. Even your parents – have you seen them, by the way?”

“Not yet,” Niall shook his head, “I…I don’t want to see them.”

“Why not?” asked Danielle. “You’ve been gone for seven years.”

“That’s exactly why,” Niall sighed. “I can take the anger that Liam had at me when we met again, but I don’t think I can do that with my parents. I don’t think it’s _fair_ to them that I show up after less than a decade only to tell them that I was alright all this time.”

“I don’t think so,” said Danielle. “Niall, they’ve been waiting for you – waiting for the day you walk back to their front door and see you as the man you came to be. They would be proud of what you have become.”

Niall stared at her, confused. “My mom’s a real estate agent, and my dad’s been a _wrongly_ convicted murderer. Why would they be proud of their son working for one of the most wanted criminals in the world?”

Danielle paled and Niall couldn’t help but think she wasn’t supposed to say that – that she knew something Niall didn’t. “Dani,” his blue eyes turned darker, “what’s Simon not telling me?”

____________________

“Are you sure he’ll come?” asked Simon.

Zayn nodded. “I asked for Ms. Edwards’ assistance in the matter.”

Simon raised his eyebrow. “Bowing to the whims of a woman? I would’ve assumed you asked for help from someone within our ranks–”

“There’s a reason why she’s an analyst now, Si,” answered Zayn. He pulled out an earpiece from his pocket and handed one as well to Simon; they both placed it in their ears. “And besides, all of your allies spy on people for money. What makes you think someone won’t pay them higher to betray you? I only trust Aunt Cheryl when it comes to counterintelligence.”

Simon seemed to have agreed. “Well, your aunt’s a bit busy at the moment so…fine. Plug her in.”

Zayn tapped his phone, static came buzzing in their earpieces, and Perrie’s voice came through. “Can you hear me?” she asked, noise of ruffling paper in the background.

“Loud and clear, Ms. Edwards,” said Simon. “Now, update on our guest, please.”

“Well, I used the coordinates Zayn gave me,” said Perrie. “He was in London Underground, heading towards Westminster, when I sent the message. The system immediately tracked his phone, which isn’t so hard to get into. There aren’t external security programs on the phone, a little weird for someone who’s on the run, but he’s heading towards your location at…” Silence. “Apparently, he’s got a car.”

“Anyone in the Yard?” asked Zayn.

“Have you checked your watch?” said Perrie. “It’s a quarter past seven. There’s no one here but me. I’m _way_ past my overtime.”

“And that is commendable,” replied Simon, expecting a wave of argument to spout between the two. He started walking towards the building, the sky already turning dark though the sun was still in the horizon, a rift in the heavens above them had formed, a border between darkness and light. “What have you found out about this facility we’re heading into?”

“It’s registered under Rancore Power Corporation,” said Perrie. “Apparently, they’ve been out of business for almost three years so the government is trying to acquire the property, turn it to some sort of eco-friendly factory, but someone’s filing restraining orders so that the property won’t be acquired.”

“And that someone being?”

“E. Fishers Limited,” Perrie disappeared for a moment or two and returned with a grunt, “It says here in this document I found that it’s a non-profit organization dedicated to funding research for climate change and environmental preservation. There has been a record of cases filed both here in the UK and in the US against companies that had significant negative effects on the ecosystem of either marine or terrestrial habitats which are considered protected reserves around the globe.”

Zayn pulled his phone out of his pocket and began typing. “There have been seventeen different man-caused environmental disasters over the last five years,” he stated and Simon nodded, urging him to go on. “Of those seventeen, the most disastrous was the collapse of an oil driller in the Atlantic Ocean, seventy miles off the coast of Ireland. Guess who one of the stockholders is?”

Simon’s eyes shifted to the tall white and red funnels that towered in the distance. “Rancore Power Corporation.” He knelt down on the ground and dusted off the dirt with his hand. Under the dirt was metal panel flooring; he knocked on it and a hollow echo sounded. “This whole facility has an underground network beneath it.” He then turned to Zayn. “Tell me more about the oil driller.”

“The oil spill affected protected marine wildlife and also birds that roost on the coast. The entire western Irish coast was covered with oil residue, poisoning most of the marine fishes that thrive near the coast.” Zayn blinked. “Reported profit loss was four billion dollars, while it took eighty million pounds to rehabilitate the area.”

This time, Simon was surprised. “Now that’s strange…”

“What is?” said both Zayn and Perrie in unison.

“Mr. Schultzer, remember him?” asked Simon to Zayn, and the raven haired lad nodded, his eyes quickly lighting up, a surge of memory suddenly passed through his mind: The diverted wired payment.

“He was the first of the many calls you received in the middle of the night for the last seven years,” said Zayn, remembering it quite clearly:

How he would sneak out of his bedroom, a blizzard howling outside the castle walls, and take a peek through the keyhole of Simon’s study. While he squatted outside the doors, Simon was striding back and forth on the carpeted floor with a wireless receiver tucked on his ear. The conversations were muffled but Zayn could see the frustration on Simon’s eyes, sometimes anger.

There was a small gasp on Perrie’s end of the line, and the attention was drawn to her. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Just remembered something too. Liam said something about what Niall told him – something about messages you received a few weeks prior to your return to England?”

“That was the penultimate reason,” answered Simon. “I told Zayn about it but not Niall. He likes the peace and those messages would only bother him. But I think those have nothing to do with the matter at hand.” He dusted off his hands. “We’re getting farther and farther down the rabbit hole without knowing anything. Let’s stick to the things we now know. How are we on our esteemed guest?”

“A few miles from your location,” said Perrie. “Probably twenty, twenty-five minutes tops.”

“Good, now,” Simon clasped his hands together, “let’s put this puzzle together. The two victims, what do we know about them?”

“The first was a German dignitary,” said Zayn. “The second was a businessman from Spain. Liam mentioned something about seeing this through the killer’s eyes – that a pattern would emerge.”

Keyboard clacking. “The Spanish is a contractor for industrial power plants,” added Perrie. “The German visited the prime minister concerning a deal between England and Germany, apparently it’s a joint livelihood project called the _Iberian Connection_.” Static silence. “Oh my god.”

Zayn’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“The livelihood project’s first order of business was the rehabilitation of an industrial plant outside of London, namely the abandoned power plant where you are now,” answered Perrie, shock prominent in her voice. “And the contractor was the Spanish businessman.”

“Good,” said Simon, making hand gestures in the air, as if Perrie could see him telling her to go on. “But before we go and make another connection, let’s go back to the motive of the killing. That incident in the Atlantic Ocean, were there any casualties? Any grievances that could cause someone to seek revenge? If there is death, then this is personal.”

“A total of twenty-seven,” replied Perrie. “Ten of which died. I’m uploading the list and details on Zayn’s phone.”

The list appeared on screen, three were women. Simon’s eyes scanned the list, particularly the men, eyeing each photograph as if one of them resurrected themselves and is now on a killing spree – like a zombie cut loose on a civilian population. Simon tapped the screen while Zayn held on to it, showing the information of the ten.

“Only two of them have families,” noted Zayn.

Simon smiled. “Mr. Ronald Jackson and Ms. Erika Finch.”

“Got it,” said Perrie and started reading something out loud. “Erika Finch is from New Orleans, Louisiana. She’s a research technician, single mother of two kids whom she left with her sister in Indianapolis. Ronald Jackson is from Louisville, Kentucky. He’s a graduate of Mechanical Engineering in MIT, single, and has been supporting his parents and his brother for three years before the accident.”

“We’re looking for a _he_ so since Ms. Finch is husbandless, let’s focus on Mr. Jackson,” said Simon. “Let’s have more on the parents and his brother.”

Suddenly there was a muffled shout and Zayn turned to the car, Liam flailing while still tied up to the shotgun seat by the seatbelt. The detective’s eyes were burning at Zayn, and the raven haired lad could make out swear words trippingly flowing from his lips. “I think he wants to kill me right now,” mumbled Zayn.

“Who?” asked Perrie, obviously not knowing the situation.

“Detective Payne,” replied Zayn, pocketing his phone. “I shot him with a tranquilizer. Now he’s awake and kicking.”

Perrie couldn’t hide the amusement in her voice. “Oh he’s _definitely_ gonna kill you.”

Zayn smirked. “If that pleases you so much, I’ll let him.”

“I think you should’ve told him why first,” cited Simon. “But in any case, another dose of those damn sedatives would do if he doesn’t calm down.” Then he raised his eyebrow suggestively. “Or maybe his frustration just needs an outlet.”

“Simon!” whined Zayn, blushing. He strode towards the car while grumbling about how Simon’s always been such a lame matchmaker, then realizing how that sounded and shook the thought off his head because those kinds of contemplations are irrelevant. And aside from not actually having attraction to the same gender, he wasn’t gonna steal what’s Niall’s (not that he _wanted_ to).

Liam was glaring at him through the window when Zayn drew closer to the car, a loathing scowl that could be compared to how Snape would sneer at Potter: a literal I-hate-you-right-now-but-I-know-something’s-up-so-please-humor-me kind of stare.

“You are an asshole,” Liam gritted as Zayn opened the door and slipped into the driver’s seat. But Zayn just shrugged him off, a hint of swagger evident in his tone as he smiled rather mischievously at the detective. “The smartest asshole there is, detective. The smartest there is.”

Liam just blinked at him, the frown on his lips perpetual.

“Would my apology be accepted?” mumbled Zayn, looking down.

“Acceptance of an apology depends on the trepidation of the one who apologizes,” replied Liam. “I mean, do you really mean it or would it be only for the reason of calming me down?”

Zayn’s sight drifted to the steering wheel. “Both, I guess.” There was something weird about how he felt like Liam towered over him more than a hundred feet up the air, the aura of authority he had being the same as that of Simon. And there was a tug in his heart which he hated because Liam was angry at him. “Look, I was just following what Niall told me to do, okay?”

Liam’s eyebrows furrowed, and Zayn gulped. “Niall told you to shoot me with a tranquilizer?”

“N-No!” Zayn’s eyes widened, and he was blushing again. “I just––well, it was the only thing I could think off. He said to keep you safe. I knew you’d scramble to rescue Louis if I told you, and Niall would be mad at me, so I went with the first thing that came into mind…”

“You could’ve just told me the truth,” said Liam. “I would have been cool with it if you’ve told me that Niall asked you to keep me safe.”

“I know that now,” muttered Zayn, fumbling with his fingers. He’s starting to act like a child! _God_ , what was Liam doing to him? “I’m sorry.”

Liam sighed. “Fine. But could you at least get me off of this seatbelt?”

“Promise you won’t run?”

“Shoot me with another tranquilizer if I do.”

Zayn tapped the small screen on the dashboard, within reach of Liam, and the detective gaped at him, sporting a disbelieving expression. The seatbelt latched itself off from its lock and shrunk back to the side of the car. “Are you fucking kidding me?” said Liam, exasperatedly.

“’Knew you’d be _too_ smart to figure it out,” Zayn grinned, “If you want to figure things about me, you’d have to stoop down to my level. That’s a fact because Niall does that, and he could open my phone with ease – which I _totally_ hate.”

Liam couldn’t hold back the chuckle. “Now that’s something. Do you want me to stay in the car?”

“That would be most appreciated, yes,” replied Zayn.

Just when Zayn was about to step out, Liam reached out for his arm. The raven haired lad would have flinched if it weren’t for the feeling that he got; a strange sense of security which he only got from his parents – who were both dead – and Simon, of course. “Just one thing,” said Liam softly.

“Yeah?” Zayn asked, trying not to sound impatient.

“Thank you…for being honest with me,” said Liam. “I might’ve called you a criminal in my head but I take it back now. You are simply ingenious and just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

But Zayn couldn’t disagree more. “I think I _am_ at the right place at the right time, detective,” he struggled to stop his lips from quivering, comparing the memory of his wrecked life as an orphan to his life now, “and I’m not going back to the life I had before Simon. If you’ve thought of me as a criminal now, I can’t imagine what kind of disgust you would have had for me back then.”

It was the most cryptic thing Liam has ever heard. “What–”

“We’ll be quick,” Zayn cut him off, “and don’t call anyone from the Yard.”

And he was off, like a shadow dispelled by the darkness, like a raven gliding into the night. Liam rested his head on the car headrest and followed by sight Zayn as he walked back to Simon, tucking his phone back into the pocket of his leather jacket and tapping his earpiece.

“Well, that was dramatic,” said Perrie. “I almost thought you were lying.”

“I wasn’t,” replied Zayn. “That was a real life story, princess. I went on living by pleasing other people. A bit immoral but I did what I had to do to survive.”

Shock was pronounce in Perrie’s voice. “You were a–”

“Yes, yes,” dissed Zayn. “Men _loved_ to have young boys suck their dicks.”

Perrie’s end of the line went silent, and Zayn wasn’t sure if he was pleased by that or not. He despised having to recall his past like that, especially now when he could easily shrug off that sickening old self of his. He was _the_ Raven now – feared and envied – not some crummy, addict teenager who gave blowjobs just so he could eat and smoke the next morning. Perhaps he scared Perrie off, made her revolted of him even.

And perhaps that was good.

He doubled back to the car, pulling out his spare earpiece and handing it to Liam through the window. Zayn smiled, shrugging off the memories of kneeling on some dank alley while some unhappily married guy fucked his mouth. “Here,” said Zayn, placing the earpiece onto Liam’s palm. “Just so you won’t feel left out. You can listen to our conversations – and maybe even add some things, details perhaps.”

“Zayn, about the thing you told me–”

“Later,” the raven haired lad cut him off again, unsure whether or not he _should_ tell him. “It’s a hell of a story. I don’t wanna be boring you or anything.”

As if he didn’t actually care if Liam was listening or not, Zayn slipped away from the car in silence. He was calm when he reached Simon, realizing when he glanced at his watch that they’ve already spent ten minutes of their allotted time.

“If you don’t want to do this anymore, Ms. Edwards, I would be happy to let you go home,” said Zayn over his earpiece. Over time, he had come to accept that those things _did_ happen to him, and there was nothing more he could do about it. “I was sickening, I know. I shiver every time those murky nights flash back into my mind.”

“I-I–” Zayn imagined her shaken, her image of him as the ravenous shadow that watches over you from the crevices and cracks shattered into a million pieces. Perrie struggled to speak but when she managed to regain her ground, she said, “I don’t mind,” but there was a hint of vulnerability still as she continued, “It’s a different life from the now, yeah? There’s no problem there. It’s just that I was–”

“Surprised?” The raven haired lad could feel a smirk building up in his expression but he suppressed it, telling his soul to get in with the program and not be an arrogant little thief he once was. “Everyone who’s heard didn’t have the slightest idea. Anyone would be surprised.”

“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?!” said Liam through the earpiece.

“It’s a long story, detective,” answered Simon before Zayn could even mutter a word. “A particular one which I don’t like recalling but we’ll have time to discuss on such an old tale like that in the future. For now, we have Louis to extract from the building and perhaps even stop this madman from finishing his _masterpiece_ of some sort.”

“Alright,” answered Liam.

Simon nodded. “Your patience is appreciated, detective. Now, to put you up to speed, we have discovered that the German national and the Spanish contractor were both working on the same project funded by both the British and German governments. There have been several cases filed by some sort of eco-coalition to prevent the factory which we are situated right now to be acquired by the government, and therefore halt the rehabilitation and conversion of this area into a bio-industrial zone.

“We think this ‘eco-coalition’ has hired someone – most probably a family member of one of the victims in the oil rig tragedy in the Atlantic Ocean who, I think, is on a personal vendetta – to murder these two key people on the project in order to prevent it from continuing any further. The oil rig, by the way, is connected to the previous owner of this factory by the case of being one of the oil riggers’ stockholders.”

“So these murders _were_ connected?” said Liam. “Is it possible that there would be another one? I’m getting the feeling that this doesn’t end with the Spanish contractor. If the government is involved, then there would also be someone of higher power, of higher office, involved in this plan. The project wouldn’t be enacted upon without the consent of Parliament.”

With a smile, Simon nodded again. “So it should. Does the Parliament decide it as a body or is there any particular lord of the realm standing in as a negotiating body?”

“Ultimately, the bidding and fate of the project won’t continue without the advice and presence of the prime minister,” said Liam thoughtfully. “You don’t think–”

Simon frowned. “I _do_ think that’s a highly probable possibility. I think the prime minister is the next target.”

“Then Louis is unguarded?” asked Liam.

“There’s a forty percent chance that he’s in there, guarded,” answered Zayn. “Thirty percent chance that he’s in there, unguarded, twenty-five percent that he’s with the killer on the way to Downing Street, and five percent that he’s not even in imminent danger.”

A car stopped in the distance. Simon smiled.

“He’s here.”


	11. The City Frozen in Time [Side Story #1]

_Four Months Ago_

The ­ _clip-clop_ of the horse’s hooves echoed through the streets as the beast pulled the _kalesa_ in which Simon boarded. His eyes scanned the surroundings, viewing the Spanish stone houses as they were lit dimly by the lanterns trailing down the street. It just rained a few hours ago and the grey bricked streets glistened in an almost fairy-esque setting. At seven at night it looked beautiful – and it was just like how Simon remembered it. It was a city frozen in time.

In the distance, Simon spotted the figure he was looking for. The man was wearing a priest’s attire of black clothes and a clerical collar; he smiled and waved at Simon like they were old friends. In fact, they _were_ old friends.

The _kalesa_ stopped and Simon hopped off, paying the driver who bid him gratitude and a _good night_. The priest opened his arms and they hugged, Simon patting his back. “Simon,” the man’s voice was deep. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s good to be back, Father Simeon,” replied Simon.

“Oh please!” Father Simeon laughed. “I’ve told you to call me Leandro!”

“I thought it was uncourteous to call a parishioner by their first name?”

“Let’s make an exception, shall we?” said Father Simeon. “After all, you are a guest.”

Simon curtsied. “A most humble guest.”

The priest smiled. “Welcome back to Vigan, Simon. It’s been ten years…”

__________________

After they had settled down inside one of the restaurants in the city, and after the cheery waiter who seemed to have high respects for the priest had taken their orders, Simon retrieved out of his bag a light brown manila envelope. Father Simeon glanced at him and chuckled. “Don’t do it slow, Simon. People might think I’m taking bribes now.” He took the envelope from Simon. “Though, God forbid, this _is_ a bribe.”

“It’s not,” assured Simon. “It’s a list.”

Father Simeon looked at Simon and then back at the envelope. He wore his glasses and began to scan the papers he took out of the envelope. “ _Dios mio_ , Simon,” whispered the priest, “the past doesn’t seem to retire from hunting you, yes? It’s been a long time since you required my assistance. Is this quite serious?”

Simon frowned. “I’m afraid so.” He smiled, regretting in showing his worry to the priest who seemed to read his emotions very well. “Take as long as you want with this… That is if you _want_ to help me still?”

The priest placed the paper over the envelope on the table. He sighed, rubbing his forehead in the process. Blinking and focus of sight shifting, Father Simeon’s eyes travelled around the room, watching the diners consume their meals, letting the soft noise of people’s conversations fill his ears. “This country has long fought for democracy,” said Father Simeon, “from the Spanish, the Americans, and the Japanese. And I think the people’s colonized-perspective mentality has corrupted the real image of what freedom is. This country is different from your beloved England and should be so.”

Simon glanced at the approaching server. “Your point being?”

“We may live in different societies, Simon,” the priest smiled, “but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have the same philosophy. We have different methods on getting things done but we both agree that evil isn’t just an image of an ugly monster – it can also be the image of a beautiful angel who is rotten to the core.”

The server placed their meals on the table, and Simon smiled. “You are poetic as always. A simple _yes_ would’ve sufficed.”

“On the contrary,” the priest chuckled, “I find it invigorating.”

When the server left, Simon leaned closer to the table. “I really need your help in this matter. My sister is already following one trail and I’ve exhausted my resources on following another… I couldn’t turn to anyone else.”

“Wasn’t Cheryl incarcerated?” asked the priest.

“Yes, but she’s…” Simon shrugged, “…very innovative. She has lots of resources inside the prison.”

“Give me a few months to find these people,” said Father Simeon. “The government had become strict since the last time you were here; they filter through every information now. Even how you got here untraced is a big mystery to me but, I know you have your ways.”

“Thank you,” said Simon.

Father Simeon took a sip of the glass of red wine beside his plate. “And so the game begins.”


	12. The Ripper [No. 56]

_Eight Years Ago_

It was pouring harder than Niall had expected.

He’s chasing his breath, his shirt clinging tightly onto his skin. He would’ve cursed harder if he hadn’t already expected that his bag was as soaked to the bone just as he was. The skin on his cheeks were substantially pink all over and he was shivering like hell.

The bus left without him…like that was surprise.

As the torrential rainfall raged on, Niall slipped under the nearest tree. He couldn’t go back to the school because it was already closed. His eyelids slowly fell down, the raindrops falling on his skin like tingly little bullets. He felt alone, and he _was_ alone. Ever since moving to this sleepy town a few hour drive from London, he and his family were like fugitives – unwanted and despised. He wanted to cry but Niall knew crying won’t accomplish anything.

Well, except get the stubborn hurt out of his chest.

While darkness was all he saw in his sight, only the feeling on his skin the prominent thing, he felt like the rain had stopped. But when he opened his eyes, a pair of brown irises were looking down on him. Niall blinked. Was he dead? Surely anyone who could stop the rain wasn’t of this world. Maybe he was an angel.

Then he noticed the umbrella.

“You’re Niall, right?” asked the boy. His smile was blinding and it made Niall blush, his already stained cheeks turning an even brighter pink. For the first time since they moved here, someone didn’t give him a cold sideways glance; instead the boy was beaming at him, his taller figure so attractive.

But the blush on his face shrunk into paleness when Niall recognized who he was. The boy in front of him was that cheery guy from his Math class and also the guy who introduced himself during the school’s general assembly as the student council vice president.

Somehow, Liam Payne decided to grace him with all his glory.

Niall flinched when Liam’s fingers touched his bare cheek. “Jesus! You’re ice cold!” exclaimed the taller lad. He quickly shrugged off his jacket and placed it over Niall’s shoulder. Niall felt like he was gonna cry because no one has ever been this kind to him since…

“There,” Liam grinned, “now you aren’t cold! Why didn’t you bring an umbrella, by the way? It’s always raining here.”

Niall blushed. “I-I forgot.”

Liam laughed heartily, and it was like all the sadness in the world chose to dissipate because of how much joy and life there was in the taller lad’s chuckle. Suddenly it wasn’t cold anymore and the blush returned to Niall’s cheeks, Liam’s stare lingering at him. If this was a temptation, Niall felt that he’s miserably failing to resist. But maybe Liam was just being kind because he pitied him? What if he’s only another piece of charity for him, a little struggler whom once he had helped would bring him recognition? Was this all for show?

Niall was about to shrug off the jacket when Liam stopped him. “What are you doing?” the taller lad asked. Niall bit his lips and mumbled, “I think I’ll be going home now. I was gonna give you your jacket back–”

Liam sighed. “Look, I know the school hasn’t been exactly _welcoming_ to you but it’s just them.” He bent his knees, their eyes leveled. “Don’t count me into that. I want you to give me a chance to prove to you that people can like you. Let me do that, please? I wanna be your friend.”

Niall felt his chest constrict. “If this is some kind of–”

“I know what’s going on in your head,” muttered Liam. Niall then realized that he was moving closer to him, the gap between them wearing thin as he continued on talking. “This isn’t any form of charity, Niall. This is me treating you like a human being, like my equal. My parents, they agree with me that your dad was a mistakenly wronged man. They think he’s innocent, and so do I.”

The blush crept down Niall’s neck with Liam’s warm breath fanning his face. He looked down. Did he just say _equal_? Equality seemed to be a highly contested word as to what extent does the equal treatment of humanity go. But Liam sounded pretty clear that he was talking about how Niall should be treated, and how he shouldn’t quiver in fear.

“Can I drop you home?” Liam sounded expectant. “I only live a few blocks from your place.”

Niall sighed. He’s got no choice, hasn’t he? “Okay,” he whispered. When he looked up, Liam was staring down on him with a goofy smile. But he didn’t take it as mischievous, as bad, he took it as a sign that Liam meant well and that he was showing Niall his true self.

Nobody’s ever done that to him: show their true selves. They had always been hiding behind masks, disguises that were always self-portrait of how corrupted most human hearts have become. It was a resolute cancer that had been rotting society down to its core. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat decimating each other in a never-ending battle. And yet, even with a simple gesture, an artless umbrella in the rain, the war seemed to have ended.

It was a no-brainer: Liam won the war.

Liam offered him his hand and Niall took it; and the two of them walked down the sidewalk under the rain that was never going to make them feel cold anymore.

________________________

_Present Day_

Louis could feel the sticky blood that had started drying on his left sideburn. Metal straps with linen padding had his wrists locked onto the arm of the chair he was seated on, the same went for his ankles. The building he was in was dead silent like the night, and it smelled like used oil and petroleum. Light fixtures hung from the ceiling above, each a few meters apart. Through the grimy windows he could see the starless, cloudy sky outside and make out faintly the reddish metal beams that shot up through the wooden ceiling. His captors were nowhere to be seen but Louis knew they were just in the darkness, watching him leisurely as he tried to struggle free out of the chair.

His stomach churned angrily and he suddenly remembered he hadn’t eaten anything all day. Then he remembered why he was kidnapped in the first place. If he wasn’t so caught up in his feelings, he wouldn’t be in a situation like this! If he just let Harry fade away for a moment from his head, his guard would’ve been up and he could’ve beaten up the madman and his assistant. But no, he let Harry charm his way into his heart, let himself be beguiled into wanting. God, he hated his hormones right now. Why can’t he pick someone…normal?

Outside the factory, Liam chose to stay inside the car by request from Zayn, asking him not to spook their _guest_ away. It’s seemed a bit overreacting but when he asked who it was and Simon answered that it was the Hacker, the detective chose to shut himself up.

“What is he doing here?” asked Liam.

“I informed him of the situation,” replied Zayn. “That’s the reason why he came: for Louis.”

“For Louis?” Liam didn’t sound convinced. “What does he want from Louis?”

“This and that,” Simon smirked, answering Liam. “It seems men can’t resist Detective Tomlinson’s allure. It entices them to do drastic things – like this for example: The Hacker has come here because he needs something from Louis.”

“You need something from him too, don’t you?” said Liam.

“Yes,” replied Simon. “But the point is that Zayn has asked for the Hacker’s assistance in this matter. He’s a far better marksman than anyone of us so it would better to have a quality killing rather than a messy, unprofessional one.”

“So he’s what, your assassin?” Liam was surprised. “And he agreed?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” asked Zayn. “Ultimately, it’s beneficial for both parties. I think he’s very concerned when it comes to Louis’ safety. He thinks Louis has a higher purpose to serve rather than just another detective of the Yard.”

Liam sounded offended. “And me?”

“Your higher purpose is much closer to home,” explained Simon. “We all know that. You are already an institution in the Yard so your best place is there with the force.”

“So Louis is basically worthless in the Yard?” growled Liam.

Zayn frowned. “No offense, but he is. Louis has untapped potential, his criminal knowledge and potency is something that _could be_ unsurpassed, and while he’s still in the Yard, it will remain intact and hidden. He could be a master criminal too, if he wanted to, but Louis, as far as I could see, has no ambitions like that. His moral value, I think, stems from the fact that he lived with his single mother in Doncaster, having a father who left them and made him the paternal figure for his younger sisters. He’s forced to uphold what is right for the sake of those closest to him – and that is his powerhouse.”

Liam couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “That’s not exactly the reason,” he said. “Not exactly why Louis is an antagonistic person.”

“Oh?” Zayn raised his eyebrow. “Interesting. This is the first time the research I’ve done is a bit off.”

“Well, it’s a secret,” replied Liam. “And it will stay a secret.”

______________________

Niall waited, patiently waited, on Danielle’s reply. The florist stared at him with utter horror, her lightly dusted tan skin turned pale after the question. Her hands fumbled with each other until she stayed stagnant for a moment and stared at Niall with conviction. “I can’t answer that,” she said. “Only Simon could answer that. I can tell you that there _are_ secrets, but I can’t tell you what they are. All people have them, Ni, and it’s not surprising that Simon has some too.”

His eyes drifted to the photographs on the shelf and sighed internally. Niall knew Danielle would not tell him anything. Even when they were teenagers – that whole year, the only time he had with both Liam and Danielle before he disappeared – she was always secretive. He remembered that time when Danielle and Liam were avoiding him, and it turned out they were planning a surprise party for his birthday. And it also turned out that Danielle had her little fingers wrapped around Liam’s neck the whole day because the lad couldn’t stop from blabbing – especially to Niall.

Now, the blonde wondered which part of his life _didn’t_ have lies.

Then he remembered his first time with Liam in the shower. Was that a lie too? He wasn’t _Liam’s_ first so what if he was just another fling to pass time by? What if all the kisses were just for fun, that what they’ve been doing for the last few days were just random acts of recreation? What if the thing they have now was just a result of two sexually frustrated people meeting after a long period of time?

There suddenly was a heavy feeling inside Niall’s chest. He suddenly felt like a whore. One of the great Detective Payne’s play toys? Niall’s hands began to shake. He’s too naïve, wasn’t he? Too stupid, too longing to belong. He was still a ghost: an unwelcomed specter in an old city whose dirty streets only welcomed the brave and the masters of their own fate.

“What’s going on in that little head of yours?” Danielle’s voice suddenly boomed in the silence, dispelling the sorcery that London had cast upon him, releasing the bind on him of unwanted mistrust. “Ni?” her voice was soft and Niall caught a worried look on her face when he turned.

Niall forced a smile. “Just thinking…about things.”

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

There was a silence that fell upon the small entertaining room behind the flower shop. Suddenly the people in the pictures, frozen in their own moments in time, seem to be watching the two figures on the couch – Niall looking down on the linoleum floor and Danielle waiting for his answer. The florist took one of the juice cups on the coffee table in front of them and took a sip, the citrusy liquid slipping down her throat when––

“How many people did Liam had sex with already?”

Danielle choked, coughing vehemently and eyes starting to water. She stared wide-eyed at Niall: Must he be always so direct to the point? A little subtlety would’ve been nice but Danielle reconsidered and thought that perhaps Simon had drained out any inhibition from Niall when it came to speaking his own mind. “Seriously?” she asked exasperatedly.

Niall nodded innocently.

“Ni,” Danielle started, hiding the fluster in her voice, “you do know that Liam doesn’t tell me _everything_ , right? That’s something private. Liam would never tell me anything about that.”

“You don’t know any of them then?” Niall pressed on.

Should she or should she not? The question pressed onto Danielle’s mind, her lips fighting off her head on whether or not to tell. She still remembered that night clearly – the trail of clothes, the tears, and the silent dinner than followed. But was it allowed to retell something like that, especially to Niall himself?

“Just one,” was Danielle’s reply. She bit her lips, hoping she would not regret replaying that memory she tucked away in the crevices of her stockpile of unwanted information. “It was Liam’s first year in uni,” she started, “every now and then I pay a visit. Back then, Liam and Nicola didn’t share the same flat because Nicola was living with her best friend inside the college. To me it was like any other day when I drive off from here to Liam’s flat. Dinner was on me, as always.

“So I got my spare key out of my pocket and unlocked the door. With the casserole in one arm, I slipped through the door, surprised to see a trail of shirts and jeans, and underwear leading up to the bedroom upstairs. I waited for almost thirty minutes. It was silent so I guessed that the coitus was over, and when the minutes went by, Liam came down the stairs in his boxers. He was _very_ surprised and embarrassed in getting caught.

“But I don’t know why I just stared at him, told him dinner was ready, and took another sip of that Coke in my hand. Perhaps it was because I could see the fear in his eyes, that somehow, seeing me there in the scene of the crime, he felt the gravity of the situation. I could see in his eyes that he considered that he cheated when, in fact, there wasn’t anyone _to_ cheat on. But then I remembered you.

“The girl left in a hurry – she’s not that pretty, you’re easily prettier,” Danielle smiled at Niall, who blushed, “and when she had gone, while both Liam and I were sitting on the dining table, he started crying, mumbling ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I’m so stupid’ over and over. The funny thing was I just let him get it all out of his system. It turned out that he’d been under depression for the longest time and he didn’t tell anyone – the sex being his distraction from the dreamt-of-reality in his head that you were never coming back.

“He missed you so much, Niall,” whispered Danielle, tears prickling her eyes. “Liam thinks he’s the reason why you disappeared. That’s the reason why he’s never slept with the same person twice because he feared that he would eventually fail if there was a commitment, just like how he failed to save you from those activists.” Danielle smiled. “But I can assure you one thing, Niall: The week after that incident was the time Liam met Louis. Somehow it gave him something to work on because Louis was pretty much different from the person he is now. They were both helping each other, and I think there were no more girls or boys in Liam’s bedroom anymore after that.”

“What was wrong with Louis?” asked Niall.

“You have to ask him or Liam yourself,” replied Danielle. “I don’t quite have the details for that one.”

“Should I feel lucky that he wanted me to stay?” whispered Niall, his left hand running down his right arm and folding towards his body. “That he wanted me to stay with him even after…you know.”

Danielle let out a carefree giggle; she was downright thrilled. “Actually, it’s _him_ who should feel lucky that you stayed because, let’s be honest,” she smirked, “you gave him what he wanted.”

Niall turned red. “Dani!”

They both laughed after that.

_______________________

Paul groaned. His head was throbbing and there was a consistent ringing on his mobile phone. He relieved himself of his slacked position on his swivel chair and let his eyes wander around his study room for a minute to adjust. When his eyes settled on his wooden desk, his wife and daughter smiled at him from a photograph. Paul smiled and grabbed the phone.

It was Perrie.

“This better be not about another one of your fangirl moments,” grumbled Paul.

“Sorry, sir,” replied Perrie. “Did I wake you up?”

“I fell asleep in my study,” answered Paul. “What do you want?”

“Sir, I’m still at your office,”

“It’s fifteen minutes before eight,” Paul got up and glanced through the window; light was still visible in the distance but it was fading fast, “what are you still doing there? You’re not a nightshift employee of the Yard.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about…”

“Malik?” Paul felt himself stiffen, his guts were telling him that something was going on. “It was Liam and him who were with you last. Did something happen?”

“Yes,” breathed Perrie. “We have a situation.”

Paul raised his eyebrow. “What kind of a situation?”

“Liam and Simon may have discovered the next target of the murderer.”

“Simon,” murmured Paul, his eyes narrowing, “he’s with you?”

“No, sir,” replied Perrie. “He’s with Liam and Zayn, outside the city.”

“Has Louis returned?”

Perrie was silent for a while. “Actually, sir…um…may I explain this to you thoroughly?”

Paul walked towards the small fridge hidden in a small compartment behind his desk and pulled out a cola can. “Please do,” he said, settling back down on his chair.

“Alright, uh,” Perrie cleared his throat, she sounded nervous, “well, let’s start with the bad news… Louis’ been kidnapped, sir–”

Paul stood up from his chair. “WHAT?!”

“Zayn and Simon are on it, sir,” Perrie answered quickly, “but that’s only a part of the problem: Simon thinks the killer is going after the prime minister.”

“ _The prime minister_?” Paul sounded enraged.

“Yes, sir,” answered Perrie calmly. “He has asked me to alert you about the situation. Since they are currently attending to matters concerning Louis, they can’t afford to head to Downing Street and stop the killer before he makes an attempt on the prime minister’s life.”

“So _he_ wants _me_ to go there?” Paul was getting impatient. “Is that right? Where’s Liam?”

“I think so, sir,” said Perrie. “As for Liam, he’s currently stagnant in his position. The killer has imposed that the presence of the Yard would consequently give him no choice but to harm Louis. Zayn had advised Liam to stay in his car.”

“Wait, how is the killer both heading to Downing Street and with Louis at the same time?”

“We believe they’re a tag-team,” replied Perrie. “There’s two of them.”

“Two of them?” Paul barked exasperatedly.

“Yes, sir.”

Paul pinched the bridge of his nose. This was worsening his headache. “What are Zayn and Simon doing now?”

“They’re currently communicating to me through radio,” answered Perrie, “so I can’t tell you _what,_ but it seems that they are speaking with Simon’s _guest_.”

“Guest?”

Paul could hear the hesitation in Perrie voice when she uttered, “It’s the Hacker, sir.”

________________________

Out of the darkness, a shadow was the first to come out, then a figure of a man with a glint of madness in his eyes. Arthur Jackson strode towards Louis, and though his expression was blank, the weight of his stare was double of gravity, its intensity sufficient enough to make birds flightless: It was deep, deranged, and destroying.

“Oh, Mr. Tomlinson,” said Arthur in an abysmal voice. Suddenly he smiled profoundly as he circled Louis’ securely seated position. “I’ve been talking with some friends of mine and they’ve been telling me how much you are so prized – and you don’t even know it. Did you know that? Did Simon tell you that, of how _important_ you are to him and his silly conquest? I bet he didn’t. My employers also told me that Simon Cowell loves to keep secrets; he’s not a liar, he just likes to have that mysterious shade.”

“Your employers?” Louis dared to raise his eyebrow. “Would that so happen to be the _Egret_?”

Arthur chuckled. “You see? You see?” His arms stretched out. “This is what they have been telling me for the longest time – you catch on pretty quick! Truly a bishop worthy for a king!”

Louis’ forehead knitted. “Bishop? I’m not a chess piece, you know.”

“Really?” Arthur grinned at him manically. “Are you so sure about that? Haven’t you been letting Simon pull your strings in order for him to get what he wants? The black card… Your full agreement to being Harry Styles’ escort… He uses people, Mr. Tomlinson – he can’t help it. He pries on their secrets and uses it to tangle them into messes he doesn’t want to clean up afterwards.”

The man in front of Louis leaned closer, enough for the detective to see the scowl on his face. “Whatever he promised you was nothing more than a promise made to be broken. I may be a small fish in Simon’s world full of whales but, in difference, I can swim my way through every nook and cranny, and learn every secret there is. I know his and yours, and that weakness he’s exposed to have you twirling like a marionette – a boy, eh?”

Louis’ eyes widened. His body reacted involuntarily, his arms and legs suddenly thrashing to break free of the bonds that tied him to the pathetic chair he was sitting on. “You keep them out of this!” he hissed, enraged and fearful at the same time.

Arthur raised his eyebrow. “So it’s those two boys then? Ah, but yes, I’ve heard of them! The two young men who’ve won the heart of our dear little detective… Interesting. So that part wasn’t just a hunch, eh?” He smiled devilishly. “Tell me, Louis, what is it with you and brown-haired men?”

Louis was about to answer when a familiar voice echoed inside the empty room.

“What he feels is none of your business.” Simon stepped out of the shadow, his bowler hat fitly snugged on his head and tipped to the side; it made him look like a mobster boss. “One feeling is different from the other. Those two men aren’t exactly the same way to him.”

With a grin, Arthur turned to face Simon. “So at last we meet. The great Simon Cowell has come down from his snowy tower in the mountains just to have a little game in the halls of this ancient city of London.”

“You being a pawn of that game?” replied Simon.

“A humble pawn,” confirmed Arthur, “but yes, a pawn nonetheless.”

“How long has this been going on?” asked Simon, “The plans, the prolific bloodbath, and all these shenanigans, I mean.”

“You seemed to have assumed that what happened before it has stopped,” Arthur raised his eyebrow, “but it hasn’t stopped, Mr. Cowell. They just huddled around while you cowered in your mountain hole. I don’t know what happened back in those days – for back then I was just a proud father with two sons – but it’s quite interesting to examine how even a single drop of humanity can vanquish the monster within. That’s your flaw, isn’t it: your humanity?”

“I’m becoming _insatiable_ for it,” Simon’s tone overflowed with sarcasm, “but, then again, that single drop vanishes and what’s left is the monster again. The monster may have been subdued, beaten into submission, but he still has a life force to finish what he has started.”

Arthur smiled. “So you _are_ a monster?”

“I’ve always been,” replied Simon. “Ever since that fateful day when I threw my parents’ murderers and their cheap truck into the plunging depths of that ocean-side cliff, ever since I saw that fear in my sister’s eyes, I have been a monster.”

Louis realized Simon was talking about what Zayn had been telling him about: The tragedy that turned Simon into who he is. He couldn’t see a hint of darkness, a drop of evil, in Simon’s eyes in that moment but how power and fragility were two interconnected things, how death and life are two things that come to a person’s life, and either make or break them. For the first time, Simon’s aura of rule had dissipated to reveal the broken mortal inside.

Maybe _everyone_ was broken, one way or another.

Then, in the silence that rose from its grave to linger and to haunt, Louis felt a figure walking behind him – Viz perhaps. But when Arthur turned his head to see who it is, Louis saw in his peripheral how the Ripper fell down to the ground, _hard_. Arthur made a grunting noise and the new person behind him hissed, “You little shit,” the person was angry – _very_ angry, “you _motherfucking_ shit.”

But Arthur laughed off the pain. “So nice to see you too, Hacker.”

Louis’ blood ran cold. The Hacker was here – but here to _what_? If he’s here to observe, then he was doing a poor job at observing, having knocked the Ripper to the ground. The detective gasped when he felt long, slender, cold fingers trace the dried blood on his sideburns. “Does it hurt?” the Hacker’s voice rumbled from his chest, reminding Louis of someone he knew.

“N-No.” Louis took air in through his nostrils, feeling the Hacker’s warm breath on his neck; for a criminal, he had exceptionally good hygiene, judging by the minty breath that wafted and dawdled in Louis’ olfactory sense. “No, it doesn’t,” Louis repeated.

The Hacker grunted.

“I heard you’ve been exercising,” Arthur managed to say, “heard you’ve been running––ah!”

With the sole of his shoe firmly planted on Arthur’s back, the Hacker hissed and pressed even harder onto Arthur’s spine. “Don’t get any ideas,” he spat. “That is not for you to tell.”

“What is it with you people and secrets?” asked Arthur smugly. “Why are you so afraid?”

“Not afraid,” replied Simon, “simply cautious.” He removed his gloves and pulled out a gun tucked away under his coat; the steel shimmered dully on the light. “Zayn, kindly get Louis out of those bonds.” Out of the darkness, Zayn emerged with a blank expression on his face – ominous nonetheless in Louis’ mind. The raven-haired lad picked the locks off the metal straps, and, after doing so, helped him out of the chair though he struggled and staggered onto Zayn’s chest because he has been seated far too long. But though he faltered towards Zayn, Louis didn’t miss the slight reaction from the Hacker – the slight twitch of his muscles as if he wanted to move and catch Louis instead of Zayn.

When they have retreated behind Simon, the Hacker bent over and dragged Arthur onto the chair where he resituated the locks onto the Ripper. After a grunt of displeasure, the Hacker settled behind the chair and Simon moved forward. Louis, observing each movement like it was some kind of suspense movie, nestled his head onto Zayn’s shoulder, his hands clamped onto the raven-haired lad’s arms because his _damn_ legs were still a bit numb. Zayn stiffened for a moment but relaxed afterwards, slipping his fore arm around Louis’ waist so the detective wouldn’t put all his weight on Zayn’s arms. The Hacker suddenly growled but Zayn only chuckled.

“Easy there, mate, I’m not making a move on him,” said Zayn. “If _that’s_ what you’re thinking.”

Louis glared at Zayn. “That made me sound like merchandise.”

“Right now, you _are_ merchandise,” replied Zayn. “A limited edition, I suppose.”

“Why me?” mumbled Louis.

“Yes, good question,” wheezed Arthur, still finding the whole situation amusing. “Do tell the boy why he’s so important, Simon, hmm? It’s quite conflicted for him. I think he has the right to know about his parents––shit!”

The Hacker yanked a fistful of Arthur’s hair. “Stop talking!” hissed the Hacker.

Louis’ grip on Zayn’s arms tightened as his eyes widened as well. “M-My parents? What do you know about my parents?!” His eyes turned to Simon but he just stared at Louis passively as if he didn’t hear anything. The detective’s voice cracked upon his next question. “Did you know…my dad?”

Arthur chuckled. “Which father?”

“I said shut up, you _sonofabitch_!” shouted the Hacker.

“WHAT DOES HE MEAN?!” Zayn took hold of Louis before he even could stagger towards Simon. The detective was full-on crying now, tears were overflowing from his eyes, and he was shaking but he himself couldn’t figure if it’s anger or sadness. “Goddammit, no more secrets! You wanted me to sign up for this _shit_ – now tell me why!”

“Louis.” Simon’s demeanor of power was suddenly on full force again and Louis was rendered motionless, his tears had stopped though he couldn’t bring himself to stop the sniffing. Now, Simon was staring back at him with seriousness. “We will talk about this after the matter at hand. I don’t care if you keep on whining while we do so. So help me, if you can’t contain yourself, I will have Zayn drag you out of this warehouse and to your just as whiny friend named Liam who is in the car. Either you stop being such a pain in the neck or I’ll _make_ you stop, do I make myself clear?”

Louis nodded quietly, and Simon proceeded towards Arthur Jackson – the man who called himself the Ripper.

“Tell me, Mr. Ripper,” said Simon. “Tell me your story. I want to listen.”

Arthur raised his eyebrow. “Do you now? What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“Well, let’s begin from the start, shall we?” Arthur smiled, glancing at Louis for a moment before returning his gaze at Simon who was standing in front of him. The Hacker, who was behind him, made no movements. “My name is Arthur Jackson and I’m from Louisville. My parents were farmers from Kansas until they decided to move when the Great Depression happened. My wife, Darlene, doesn’t know anything about this – she’s in a mental hospital, you see; my wife just didn’t take our eldest son’s death well – and it’s only me and my younger son, Viz, now.

“A few months after the death of my son, people approached us – British like you folks – and told us plenty of stories and all about their organization. And what do you know, they convinced us to _assist_ them with some matters at hand. By the time when your Parliament had been in the process of agreement with the terms of Germany about this here abandoned power plant, the organization had flown us here to London.”

“The Egret, you mean?” asked Simon.

“Yes, them friends of yours, as they like to tell me,” replied Arthur. “And the rest, I guess, you’ve already figured out in those bright minds of yours.”

“The killings,” said Simon, “who does that, you or your son?”

“Viz does,” answered Arthur. “It was his main purpose for this job of ours. His brother was his idol, you see, and it tore him apart when he died in that wretched oil spill. So when he was asked to do those things, he didn’t even hesitate. I don’t know about you but my boy loved his brother so much he would kill for him, avenge him even.”

“And you? What’s your job?”

“My job is Louis Tomlinson,” said Arthur, “and that blonde kid of yours, Niall. My job is to keep an eye on them for the organization, says they have big plans for these two kids.”

“Can you tell me?”

“No.”

Simon pointed the gun on Arthur’s head. “I’ll count to three.”

“No need for them darn firepower, Mr. Cowell.” Arthur closed his eyes and slowly began to murmur softly. It sounded like gibberish to Louis at first but then, Arthur’s voice became louder but still somewhat soft. As the words (which sounded like he was reciting it) came one after another, Simon’s eyes widened; somehow he knew what it was all about: “ _After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped in residue with the feet of it; and it_ was _diverse from all the beasts that_ were _before it; and it had ten horns_ –”

A loud noise echoed through the warehouse.

The Hacker took a step backwards.

Louis’ eyes widened in horror.

Zayn held him closer, afraid Louis will somehow do something stupid.

Simon withdrew his munitions.

And Arthur Jackson slumped on the chair, wrists and ankles still locked, blood slowly trickling from his head.

“And so ends the Ripper,” said Simon.

_____________________

Cheryl sat at the coffee shop across the lane from Harry Styles’ apartment. She was sipping her tea while her eyes gazed on the tablet on the table, watching a bright green dot blinking inside Harry’s residency. It was moving, though very sluggishly, and Cheryl hated it – she hated how Simon was right about Harry. She closed her eyes for a moment and internalized.

The green dot was a tracking device she asked so very nicely to one of the servers in the coffee shop to attach to Harry ever so subtly while pretending to have spilled his drink. It worked and now it was proving – the green dot on the screen, that is – that Harry hasn’t left his apartment during and after the time Perrie made contact with the Hacker.

If Harry Styles is the Hacker, she thought, then who is?

But then, the green dot disappeared.


	13. The Whispering Ghosts

Louis was screaming as Zayn took hold of him. If he would piss Simon off and die because of it then so be it, just as long as he can get the things in his chest out. The Hacker was standing silently and motionless behind Simon like a marionette tied to unmoving strings; it reminded him of what Arthur Jackson told him – of him being Simon’s little puppet.

“Why did you kill him?!” shouted Louis. “He knew something about my father!”

“Louis, not now…” Zayn murmured, glancing at Simon fearfully.

“He knew _nothing_ about your father,” said Simon calmly.

“And you do, you motherfucker?” spat Louis.

Simon stared at him silently.

“Why all the secrets?” Louis sobbed hopelessly. “Why me – why _me_?! Why am I so important to you, why is everyone you pull into your life – me and Liam, Zayn and Niall – so important?! All you do is _hide_ things because that’s what you’re good at!”

Louis heard Zayn sigh behind him.

“Enough, Detective Tomlinson,” said Simon. “Put away all your childish fears and doubts. These are the things that will kill you in this world – the fear and the doubt. It’s not about when you trust someone, it’s about when you don’t know who to trust… Not even yourself.”

It was at that time that Louis stopped crying. There was coldness in the air, and it was making his ears buzz and his chest constrict. He suddenly felt sick. Louis stared back at Simon, his hands slowly holding on to Zayn’s arms around him. “Just tell me one truth,” said Louis. “ _Please_.”

“Mark Tomlinson,” said Simon. “You use his last name even if you knew he wasn’t really your father and you hated him for leaving your family, am I right?”

Louis nodded.

“You already knew that truth so let me tell you another.” Simon glanced at Zayn and then back to Louis: every heartbeat, every second, was like a million years, and through the fell feeling that lingered in the air Louis knew that the truth in Simon’s lips was something he didn’t want to hear.

“I killed your real father.”

______________________

_Three Years Ago_

_London, England_

Liam had always considered sadness as the completely wrong emotion tied to the rain. He found it stupid that something that gives life, something that washes away the filth of this world, would be rendered with the amount of negativity as one would subject a wrong deed. What’s so wrong with the rain?

In short, he loved the rain. He loved the soft chill it brought in misty mornings and on sleepless nights, thrilled when the rain showered down from the heavens, and how it made him smile amidst the gloom that seemed to creep up to him in the worst of times. It made him remember that whole year that felt like forever – those three hundred and sixty-five days when something so precious was within his reach, so much so that the feel of his skin was etched in Liam’s memory – but it made him miss those times as well.

With his favorite chipped mug wrapped around his hands, he took a sip of his tea. Liam stared out through the window of his bedroom and to the outside where the drizzle continued on. Raindrops trickled on the glass which fogged up when he leaned closer, his breath warm and in contrast to the cold. He needed the cold – he needed it to numb the pain.

It’s been four years but, goddammit, the wound was still as fresh as it could be. He knew that somehow it wasn’t his fault, but somehow it _was_. But the worst part was that he’s been trying to forget, trying to desperately disremember, the feeling of Niall’s skin against his, the bright smile and his infectious Irish laugh, and the feeling he got when he’s alone with Niall – that nagging feeling in his chest, constricting and heavy, to just lean over and kiss him and tell him how much he loved him.

But now, his memories of Niall were just whispering ghosts.

He tried to drown the misery, tried to burn it down with unneeded lust and pleasure, but with every man or woman he’s been with he felt disgusted and revolted of himself on both sides of the equation: he felt disgusted for even involving other people into his depression and he was disgusted that he _did_ those things just because he wanted to free himself from the thought that he lost Niall. He lost one of the things he thought he would never have and now he was being a fucked-up asshole about it.

Maybe if he just died, the problem would be over, right? _No_ , he thought, _suicide doesn’t solve anything_. The thought of killing himself came up once and a while but entertaining it was never his intention. What he wanted was something to think about – a distraction – and that was what Louis was for.

 _Sorry! Sorry! I’m am_ so _sorry, mate!_

Liam could feel himself smiling now, remembering the first time he and Louis first met. He was a clumsy little thing with the glasses and the side-swept bangs that made him look like a twink in an infomercial. Cute, but no. For the first time ever, Liam didn’t want to make this guy in front of him join the let-me-fuck-you-tonight-so-I-can-forget-my-misery-for-a-moment club. The first impression you’d get when meeting Louis Tomlinson was that he’s a quiet, demure being – but no, he was nothing like that. Once you get to know Louis, he’s the loudest little prankster in the planet. Actually, fifteen minutes into meeting Louis Tomlinson, Liam just wanted to strangle him, seriously.

The door to Liam’s bedroom opened and Louis slipped in, a bunch of folders tucked between his arms. He smiled and Liam smiled back but turned away to the window again, setting his chipped mug by his feet. Louis plopped down by his legs, threatening the mug to spill all of the tea onto the freshly washed carpet. “Exams tomorrow,” said Louis.

“I don’t care,” mumbled Liam. “Maybe I’ll just rely on stock knowledge.”

“Jeez, down the dumps again, Payne?”

“Yeah, Tomlinson,” mumbled Liam.

Louis chuckled. “Mate, you are _so_ fucked up, you know that?”

“Says the ex-pot head,”

“I guess we’re both fucked up,” Louis said quietly. “And I think that’s why we’re stuck with each other. We’re two peas in a pod – two reckless, impulsive peas in a pod. It’s insane, really, that we haven’t killed each other yet.”

“The only reason why we aren’t both dead is because we had a deal.”

While Liam absent-mindedly traced lazy circles on Louis’ pajama-covered knee with his index finger, Louis hummed in amusement; he leaned closer and their bodies were almost touching. “We didn’t had a _deal_ , you inaugurated me as your best friend before I could even decline.”

Liam shrugged, his fingers were slowly making their way down Louis’ knee. “It was a make or break situation. And I didn’t want no for an answer.”

“Pfft,” Louis rolled his eyes, “you’re always so pushy––Liam, what are you doing?!”

With a single defining move, Liam’s muscles springing into action in a quick rate, Louis was underneath him on the windowsill seats. The pillows were thrown onto the floor beneath them and Louis cheeks burned scarlet as Liam hovered above him, eyes definitely dark. Not to mention so damn sexual – and sexual was not good, dark eyes were a warning signal; a warning that this was beyond their deal. Louis gasped upon feeling Liam’s hands on his hips. “L-Liam–”

For a moment, Louis was nervous, but when that moment passed, electricity buzzed through his body and he started laughing. “L-Liam! S-Stop! Hahahahaha!” But the other lad on top of him just grinned evilly and tickled him some more. Then they were both laughing, Liam shouting, “Tickle attack!”

“You’re– _hahahaha_ –a– _hahahaha_ –tickle– _hahahaha_ –monster!” Louis was shaking and almost out of breath from all the laughter, his skin’s senses were over sensitized by the amount of tickling he was experiencing. Liam, the bloody sadist that he was, tickled him some more. “I’ll show you who’s pushy, Tomlinson!”

“I concede!” yelled Louis exasperatedly.

Amidst the laughter that echoed on, that slowly died down, Louis had a bright smile on his face. He was still giggling, and Liam was still laughing in mockery at him. As the lad above him stared, Louis grinned and stuck his tongue out. “Meanie,” he said. “That hurt a bit…”

But then the smile on Liam’s face slowly fell into a frown, and he was watching Louis with an ashen face. “Liam?” Louis asked, suddenly worried, and to which Liam answered, “Does it really hurt?”

“N-No, not really…”

“I hurt you…”

“Liam, that wasn’t what I meant–”

Liam’s hands left Louis sides and flew towards his face, covering it somewhat. Then Liam was shaking, soft sobs slowly becoming louder and louder. He sunk back on the windowsill seat and curled up into a ball of sorrow. “Shit, Payne,” groaned Louis, “not now…”

It was starting again.

“I-I’m sorry…” whimpered Liam, curling himself further into isolation. “I’m–”

Louis knelt in front of him, trying to ease Liam out of his curled up position, and once he was, Louis would pull him closer. It was a random thing, these attacks. Louis had seen worse, really, much worse moments when Liam succumbed to his depression. It was a hard thing to deal with, having to be there before he makes all the wrong choices as before, but Louis sees it through. He agreed to this – it was part of the deal with Liam. And with Liam having already solved Louis’ addiction problem, Louis thought it only fair that he was there for Liam to overcome _his_ problems.

_“Have you had a doctor check him?” Louis asked, seated snuggly on the couch._

_Danielle took a sip of her diet Coke and nodded. “We have, actually. Last week. You know, before you two met. I found out about his depression and we talked about it, deciding to tell his mom. Karen was crying on the phone, saying she’ll come over. So the next day she did and we went to see a specialist.”_

_“And?”_

_“The doctor said it wasn’t bipolar or anything like that. Liam’s just…” Danielle looked away for a moment, took another sip of her Coke, and then sighed, “…overly depressed. No medications whatsoever but he needs continuous supervision so he won’t do anything to harm himself.”_

_“I’ll do that,” said Louis quickly. “I promised him I’ll do that.”_

_Danielle smiled. “I know you will.”_

_“It’s about this Niall guy, isn’t it?”_

_“Liam blames himself,” said Danielle. “He had always blamed himself for Niall’s disappearance. We’ve tried talking to him about it but he just wouldn’t listen.” She bit her lip and looked at Louis. “But maybe he’ll listen to you. I don’t believe in coincidences; you bumped into him for a reason.”_

“Hey,” Louis’ voice turned softer. Though it may be a frustrating and laborious task to fix something that is broken, filling the holes that make up the pain, Louis wanted Liam to get over it. He wanted his friend to see where this downward spiral was leading him, and he wanted Liam to pause from his fall and go the other direction. It was a matter of choosing. “Repeat after me: I am free.”

Liam’s fists clenched around Louis’ shirt. “I-I am f-free,” he muttered, struggling.

“I,” said Louis.

“I,” repeated Liam.

“Am Liam Payne,”

“Am Liam Payne…”

“And I want to be happy,”

“And I want to be happy…”

“It’s not my fault,”

Liam’s body shook, his fists clenched even more. “I-I can’t do it–”

“This hurts, I know; believe me, I do.” Louis could feel Liam’s chest heaving and suddenly his eyes were brimming with tears. Through Liam’s pain he remembered _his_ pain and it was, and always will be, the most bizarre and fucked up thing that connected the two of them. They were, after all, two broken peas in a pod: two shattered souls surrounded by whispering ghosts. “But trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t your fault. I really do hope Niall is somewhere safe, and with that in mind, you have to stop _guiltyfying_ yourself…”

Liam muttered something incoherent.

“What?”

“ _Guiltyfying_ is not a word…”

Louis snorted, trying to force the forming smile off of his lips, but he just couldn’t. “You dare correct me at a time like this?”

Liam just hummed amusedly. With his grip on Louis’ shirt loosening, he softly whispered, “Don’t leave me, Louis.” He sounded weak, he sounded desperate… He sounded afraid. “I don’t want anyone to leave me again.”

“Well, I won’t,” answered Louis. “I promise.”

“I’ve always wanted a brother.”

“I have been told…”

“Will you be my brother, Lou?”

“Yes.”

“…”

“…”

“Hey, Lou…”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“Eww, dude, no. Just no. I thought those words were for Niall?”

“I can tell you that too, can’t I? You’re my brother.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“…”

“…”

“Hey, Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you,” Liam paused, “tell me that too?”

“Fine,” said Louis. “I love you too, Li.”

________________________

_Switzerland – Remote Town Outside of Geneva_

The skies seemed to have remained clear overnight as Zayn passed through the hallway down to the kitchen. After the rough snow storms that raged on for days last week, nature seemed to have calmed down from her rage. Four in the morning was just as dark as the pitch black midnight in other places and the medieval hallway lights gave the castle walls a more ancient feel.

Simon was never fond of famous paintings. Even though he could buy – anonymously if he wanted – any painting that he desired, Simon settled with the local painters whose talents were underrated. The proof of his fascination with undervalued talent was shown with the promenade of paintings that trailed along the walls of the villa: Thousands of unknown masterpieces about nature and humanity paraded and gave life to the aging brick earthworks.

While the castle may be ancient, the kitchen was another story. Zayn traversed along the kitchen, pulling out ingredients for breakfast out of the stainless steel fridge, its doors littered with photos of Zayn and Niall mostly having snowball fights, and placed it all on the obsidian counter; he then began with the cooking.

“You’re up early,” said a voice behind Zayn.

“Kitchen duty, Ni,” replied Zayn, chuckling while sautéing onions and garlic. “Or have you clearly forgotten since you only slept for almost an hour?”

“I was waiting for the comet,” replied Niall, settling behind the kitchen isle table. “You didn’t have to keep an eye on me.”

“I tried to,” answered Zayn, “but I fell asleep. Did you see the comet?”

Niall nodded. “Took a while but yeah, I did.”

“How was it?”

“Boring as hell.”

Zayn laughed. “Aww, poor you.”

“Laughing at my pain, are you, Malik?”

“Quite so, Mr. Horan,” replied Zayn with a smirk. “I find it satisfying.”

“Sadist,”

“Masochist,”

“Weirdo,”

“Nerd,”

“Cunt.” Zayn snickered.

Niall gasped. “You asshole!”

“Why thank you! I most definitely am.”

After a few more of the ritual name-callings, they both decided to stop because the garlic was starting to get burned. Niall rested his head onto his arms on the table as he watched Zayn zip through the kitchen, dashing back and forth ever so gracefully while the pans sizzled with the much-awaited breakfast.

In the silence, in the lack of human voices and only the presence of cooking meat and vegetables, Niall pursed his lips; his fingers were slowly tapping to the tune of his favorite song. “Do you ever miss Bradford, Zaynie?” he asked.

Zayn was taken aback for a second and then chuckled. “Of course not,” he replied, scooping the scrambled eggs out of the pan and into a large white oval plate. “My life has much more meaning here than there and, besides, I don’t have any family to go back to there.” He caught Niall’s sad expression. “Do you wanna go home, Ni?”

“I don’t know,” murmured Niall. “For all I know they think I’m dead. They don’t like me there anyway so what’s the point of going back there? My parents have probably moved on too.”

“And Liam?” Zayn smiled. “C’mon, Ni, he’s bound to be looking for you.”

“He’s probably forgotten about me too,” answered Niall. “I was nothing more than a friend to him.”

Zayn rolled his eyes. “Really? I’m no expert in love – because I’ve never been _in_ love before – but scientifically speaking, the data are already there.” Niall groaned but Zayn continued on, somewhat amused that the Irish with him in the kitchen was struggling not to deny the correctness of his postulations. “I know what you’ve told me, what you have brought out of your sweet memories, are just stories and are not definitively unbiased but based on the way he acted when you were around, this Liam was – and is probably _still_ – in love with you.”

“Don’t use science on me,” mumbled Niall, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting.

With the breakfast plates set aside, steam rising from them like billows of silk clouds, Zayn leaned onto the counter and smiled at Niall goofily. “Even without arithmetic or complicated equations, you can’t deny the fact that this universe – this rarely lazy frickin’ _universe_ – conspired to have you and Liam meet each other properly under that tree while it was raining. Though gravity can be a heartless bitch sometimes, this kind of falling you felt must have been the best thing in the world.”

Niall was now flushed red on the cheeks, his teeth nibbling on his bottom lip. “You…” he croaked.

“I’ll ask you again, for the sake of all things sane,” Zayn paused, his hazel eyes not leaving Niall’s blue ones. “Do you want to go home, Ni?”

Niall let out a frustrated sigh.

“Yes.”

_____________________________

_Present Day – London, England_

It had stopped raining.

For the last few days, the drizzle that seemed to tippy-tap like a never-ending musical play had decided to postpone another show. Louis gave a deep sigh as he stared at his blurred reflection on the window pane which was stained with dried up blots of rainwater.

“Lies,” he whispered.

With a cup of Earl Grey in hand, Louis retreated from the window and settled on his desk. Paperwork was starting to pile up, deliveries that Liam brought from Scotland Yard just in case Louis decides to work as the comfort of his own home.

But then again, none of these past few days have been comforting. Firstly, Paul Higgins decided to take no action regarding Simon’s confession that he murdered Louis’ biological father, neither did Higgins give him a reason why.

Secondly, he received a phone call in the middle of the night a two days ago from his mother in Doncaster; a quiet conversation which had blown into Louis throwing a tantrum over the phone, screaming about how his mother was lying to him all this time, because by the middle of the conversation Louis’ mother has confessed that she knew all about what had happened to Louis’ real father. By the end of the conversation, Louis slammed the phone which he regretted a few minutes later. He tried to call his mom but he was greeted by a voice message by his sister instead.

Finally, the topic of Harry Styles being the Hacker had been bothering him so much. As far as he was concerned, these two mysterious people were different entities. He never felt the same feeling as he had with Harry when the Hacker talked to him back in the power plant – it was a different aura. Although it was plausible, seeing that Harry had seemingly disappeared from his house for a while and then popped out of the blue during the time the Hacker had appeared, Louis still had his doubts on Cheryl’s account.

Louis gave a frustrated huff and stood up, making his way to the bookshelf and pretended to browse the books which he had read over and over again. But there was an old photo album which he ignored before that now caught his eye. He pulled it out, the musty odor of its leather cover wafting, and opened it.

A picture of two little boys fell out.


End file.
